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A Children's Bible

Lydia Millet

3.76 · Rating details · 14,561 ratings · 2,199 reviews

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s sublime new novel—her first since the National Book Award long-listed Sweet Lamb of Heaven—follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion.

Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and s ...more

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Hardcover, 224 pages

Published May 12th 2020 by W. W. Norton Company

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Sep 10, 2020 Roxane rated it really liked it

I love the premise and the use of first person plural. More layered than you might think. It’s a story about precious teenagers who are simply over their parents and then it becomes something else entirely. I think there could have been more development of the catalytic event and it’s aftermath. The ending starts to unravel. But still, I loved this book and couldn’t put it down. Despite what didn’t work, I believed in the narrator and the rest of the kids. Really smart writing, too.

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May 21, 2020 Marchpane rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-releases, read-in-2020

A Children’s Bible is a weird shapeshifter of a novel. It morphs in gradual, surprising ways as you read. I enjoyed this aspect so much that I highly recommend going in cold—don’t even read the blurb!—with the caveat that, if you like your fiction strictly realistic, this might not be the book for you.

But if you are reading this review, it might already be too late for that. So, without giving away more than the blurb already does, A Children’s Bible is a wry, literary coming of age tale, in A Children’s Bible is a weird shapeshifter of a novel. It morphs in gradual, surprising ways as you read. I enjoyed this aspect so much that I highly recommend going in cold—don’t even read the blurb!—with the caveat that, if you like your fiction strictly realistic, this might not be the book for you.

But if you are reading this review, it might already be too late for that. So, without giving away more than the blurb already does, A Children’s Bible is a wry, literary coming of age tale, in which several families with teen & pre-teen children share a holiday lakehouse … until their summer idyll is interrupted by the apocalypse.

The teenage Eve narrates, using a lot of the first-person plural as she speaks collectively for the children. They despise their degenerate, cocktail-addled parents, and devise all sorts of games and other means to avoid them over the long, languid days.

The parents are dangerously negligent, too busy having their ‘last hurrah’ to care about anything; the children camp on the beach for three days, returning to the house when a violent storm approaches; waters rise, flooding the grounds. After this ‘Flood’ arrives, more biblical references come thick and fast. Eve’s little brother Jack uses a bible to decode the strange events, saying: “…it’s a story. Things are symbols.” Jack doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in nature.

When men with guns show up, things drifted into too-familiar Hollywood-movie brutality. Being set in America, maybe this was the only logical direction Millet could take. But this is ultimately a minor detour, and the earlier tone returns: a hazy, surreal dream in the midst of doom.

A Children’s Bible takes on the generational burden of climate change, and encodes it into familiar tropes from literary fiction, apocalypse tales, and religious eschatology. It’s a story, things are symbols. But it is also moving, even sweet at times. The measured trajectory from realistic, to implausible, to surreal, befits a world ‘caught off guard’ by a slow-moving and completely foreseeable crisis. 4.5 stars, rounded up. ...more

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Jul 29, 2020 s.penkevich rated it liked it

Shelves: climate_crisis, apocalypse

Finalist for the 2020 National Book Awards!

‘That was the sad thing about my molecules: they wouldn’t remember him.’

The world ravaged by climate change, society thrashing in its death throes, a possible pandemic looming...a few years ago this might have seemed to some like the works of speculative apocalyptic fiction (or a natural prediction of the future to others). Lydia Millet’s newest novel, A Children’s Bible, tackles this potential future in a utterly engaging story that juxtaposes the yout ...more

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Jan 05, 2020 Chelsea Humphrey marked it as dnf-lost-interest

Shelves: from-publisher, netgalley, recommended

DNF @ 30%

*sobbing* I adore Lydia Millet, and her novel Sweet Lamb of Heaven is one of the most memorable books I've ever read, but I think this particular book of hers just isn't for me. I will be anxiously awaiting her future releases though, and remain a hardcore fan.

*Many thanks to the publisher for providing my review copy. ...more

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Jun 08, 2020 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it

Biblical apocalypse, climate Armageddon, Lord of the Flies and a little of The Road, with Pandora box thrown in for good measure. If you read this you will see where these references fit and maybe have a few of your own. What a story, a story that takes much from today's concerns and multiplies them.

I'm going to say only a little about the story itself, I think that is better for future readers. There are parents, hedonistic, freely imbibing and showing little concern for their children. The ch ...more

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May 12, 2020 Ron Charles rated it it was amazing

In the beginning, the kids are alright. The adults, though, are already sliding toward Sodom and Gomorrah.

That’s the starting point of Lydia Millet’s novel “A Children’s Bible,” which offers a bracing reflection on the generational conflict playing out in the atmosphere. I swear on a stack of copies that it’s a blistering little classic: “Lord of the Flies” for a generation of young people left to fend for themselves on their parents’ rapidly warming planet.

Millet writes brilliantly about everyt ...more

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Mar 29, 2020 Drew rated it it was amazing

Shelves: tob21

5+ out of 5.
Sometimes you read a book that strikes at your present moment more forcefully than the author could've ever imagined. A CHILDREN'S BIBLE is that kind of book, and if there's any justice, this is the book that people are going to come out of the coronavirus quarantine holding up as The Book of this time.

A bunch of rich (or rich-ish) parents descend on a big house for a summer vacation with all of their kids. Evie, one of the oldest, narrates a scene of debauchery and semi-idyll: the k ...more

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May 16, 2020 Matthew rated it it was ok

It’s tough to make light of anything these days. Sure, you could turn to social media for some clever memes and a quick laugh. But those are rooted in fear, one that has sadly united us, dulled our perceptions of brightness down to a perpetually overcast state. What’s more, we’re on edge more than ever; jokes that would delight most are falling flat, missing their mark. “Too soon,” they’d retort.

But then I think about our current tumultuous state of affairs – or, really, any tumultuous state of It’s tough to make light of anything these days. Sure, you could turn to social media for some clever memes and a quick laugh. But those are rooted in fear, one that has sadly united us, dulled our perceptions of brightness down to a perpetually overcast state. What’s more, we’re on edge more than ever; jokes that would delight most are falling flat, missing their mark. “Too soon,” they’d retort.

But then I think about our current tumultuous state of affairs – or, really, any tumultuous state of affairs – through the lens of adolescent eyes. Not so much my daughter’s (she’s 5, blissfully oblivious to the severity of COVID) but that of teenagers – kids whose worlds are inherently insular. Through casual observations alone I’ve been witness to flippancy, disregard. And for as irritated as I should be, I think about how I would’ve reacted to such adversity when I was their age. I didn't know any better back then; how could I expect for kids these days to know any better now?

Does this explain the glibness exhibited by the children that center Lydia Millet’s modern Revelation, A Children’s Bible? Perhaps so. What I can confirm, however, is that such lightness towards a world unraveling before one’s very eyes allowed me to consume Millet’s work more openly. I eschewed adult gravity for juvenile buoyancy, imagined myself at 15 facing the End of Times. And yet the novel still failed to connect.

I then considered A Children’s Bible’s religious angle. As one who is not by any means a man of God, I thought maybe I’d let my personal beliefs get in the way of my reading experience. Ironically, the parallels between the New Testament’s Revelation and Millet’s contemporary version of it resulted in the strongest narrative A Children’s Bible had to offer.

So, I pondered Millet’s work from a different viewpoint, one more readily relatable – through the eyes of the adults in A Children’s Bible. They’re portrayed as selfish, neglectful, prone to excess; yet they're ultimately punished for their sins. It felt as much like a condemnation on modern-day parenting as it did a warning: to pay attention.

Speaking of attention, I suppose some context would help in the matters of this fittingly unfocused diatribe. A Children’s Bible is the story of a dozen – one biblical parallel the novel could’ve done without – children, most of which in their teens, forced to summer at an expansive (and expensive) East Coast lake house. We learn their parents were old college friends, yet oddly these children are strangers to one another. We also learn their parents are mostly well-to-do professionals who would rather spend their vacation in a sex- and/or substance-induced haze than paying even the slightest bit of attention to their children. The kids bond over this shared neglection and their blasé attitudes towards it. They even make games out of it. We should feel bad for them; at the very least sympathetic. If anything, I felt bored.

As if sensing this, Millet then abruptly shifts the narrative from social commentary to dystopian fiction. After a short camping trip near the ocean – whereupon they meet (and party with) some slightly older WASPy one-percenters – the children return to the lake house to see it’s been ravaged by a hurricane. And yet the parents continue to do as they’ve done: drugs and each other. The kids, led by Eve (who narrates), are left to their own devices. Again.

All the while, Eve’s little brother, Jack, has started reading “A Child’s Bible: Stories From the Old and New Testaments,” as gifted to him by one of the parents. As the weather – and the destruction it has caused – continues to worsen, Jack notices parallels between the storm and the stories in his book. It made for an interesting twist; had it been streamlined throughout A Children’s Bible, I think the novel would’ve lived up to its title.

Suffice to say, it never does. For a novel so slim (only 224 pages), A Children’s Bible manages to do too much (or try to). Outside of Eve and Jack, I couldn’t tell you a thing about any of their many, many cohorts, let alone name them (save for Val, but only because she annoyingly repeated whatever anyone said). For someone as skilled as Millet, I found her lack of character development to be wholly – holy? – disappointing. What’s more, her attempt at blending satire with scripture felt messy and unfocused.

Above all, my biggest issue with A Children’s Bible was its tone. The novel never took itself seriously enough for me to return the favor. Moreover, it made me care less and less about something I’d wanted nothing more than to love. I gave it every opportunity, too, having temporarily shed my own sensitivities for the sake of levity, of something true. Unfortunately, A Children’s Bible didn’t provide me with much to believe in. ...more

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Oct 15, 2020 Kathleen rated it liked it

National Book Award for Fiction Shortlist 2020. First of all this is NOT a bible. Instead, Millet has written a dystopian tale where twelve children are far more mature than their alcohol-, drug, and sex-obsessed parents. The negligent parents have rented a huge house for the summer and have left the children to fend for themselves. Not surprisingly, both the parents’ and their children’s lives become forever altered when a severe storm strikes and society begins to break down.

There are striking ...more

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Jan 25, 2021 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it liked it

Recommended to Jenny (Reading Envy) by: Ron Charles

Shelves: read2021, post-apocalypse-and-dystopia, hoopla, tournament-of-books, audiobook

This novel from the Tournament of Books shortlist starts with a multi-family vacation on the coast, with parents that are a bit absentee and children who talk like they have PhDs. A storm comes and along the way it starts to become clear that these are not normal times or circumstances, and it rolls over into an apocalypse journey/survival tale. If the tone of this post comes across as unimpressed, that is an accurate interpretation. Add the wandering tropes to heavy handed allegory (a girl name ...more

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Jan 19, 2021 Neale rated it really liked it

Shortlisted for the 2021 TOB.

They are the children of the elite, on holidays with their parents in a huge mansion. And yet the children become bored, day in, day out, watching their parents get drunk, and lounge around. Each parent embarrassing their child. The parents neglect to even acknowledge their children, so the children decide to strike out on their own leaving their languorous mothers and fathers behind to themselves.

While reading this I could not help but be constantly reminded of Will Shortlisted for the 2021 TOB.

They are the children of the elite, on holidays with their parents in a huge mansion. And yet the children become bored, day in, day out, watching their parents get drunk, and lounge around. Each parent embarrassing their child. The parents neglect to even acknowledge their children, so the children decide to strike out on their own leaving their languorous mothers and fathers behind to themselves.

While reading this I could not help but be constantly reminded of William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”. Although the children decide to enter their isolation voluntarily, they are still left to fend for themselves, and when things start to take a turn for the worse, they must fight for survival.

Millet throws the works at the children. A destructive hurricane, induced, of course, from global warming and our increasing battle with the climate catastrophes that we have brought upon our world. Suspicions of a virus, a pandemic that is sweeping closer. Armed militia rednecks, who only enforce, and add to the suspicion, that something has gone wrong out there in the world.

Millet also creates the feeling that the children are ultimately the ones in control, and not the parents. In the aftermath of the hurricane, the parents seem paralyzed to act, they choose to get even more drunk and stoned. Is this a jibe, an accusing finger, that it will be left up to today’s generation and the following, to repair the damage that we have done to the world’s fragile state.

The parents have relieved the children of their phones, and their access to the net, that vital tether for many of them, is severed. This forces them to search for entertainment in other ways. Nature steps in for the place of technology. They play in the trees, the water, they make a game in which each of them must guess the other’s parents. I feel that this is Millet again giving us a message. Social media, the internet, needs to be controlled, moderated. We need to get back in touch with nature.

Evie is the narrator of the story, and it is her little brother, Jack, who ties this narrative to the title. Jack has with him a children’s bible. He is very inquisitive and curious, not just content to read it, he wants to find meaning and answers, and eventually believes he has found the answer to the Holy Trinity and God.

For me this is a novel full of allegory, and personally I love these types of novels. 4 Stars.
...more

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Jan 20, 2021 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it

Shelves: _pulitzer-hopefuls-2021, american-21st-c, novels, fiction, dystopian

Sort of a Lord of the Flies meets the fourth season of the Walking Dead, A Children’s Bible is a fable about climate change, neglectful parents and the invincible optimism of children. It is rather a dark portrayal of adulthood with parents who have completely abdicated their roles in raising kids. The apocalyptic background sort of parallels the Bible stories which Jack reads along the way. The protagonist is his sister Evie who has pluck and grit and bears through the many catastrophes being a ...more

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Apr 30, 2020 Vonda rated it really liked it

Shelves: net-galley

A beautifully flowing and wonderful book about a group of teens, thrown together by their parents during a group family vacation, who band together against the drunken and irresponsible adults around them. It begins as a story about how kids view their parents and flows into a complex story about how the young people survive and take charge of an apocalyptic world. Eve’s little brother has a children’s bible, and the world around them mimics the things he reads about, including Noah and the floo ...more

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May 30, 2020 Jill rated it liked it

Shelves: admire-but-don-t-love

In this broken, topsy-turvey world it’s no wonder that authors gravitate to the loss of innocence as a theme – particularly children turned feral. I recently finished The Luminous Republic and that book was still very much in my mind as I read A Children’s Bible.

In almost disconcertingly spare and emotionless prose (another commonality with The Luminous Republic), Lydia Millet paints a world where adults and children are distinctly at odds. The parents, close college friends, decide to go on an In this broken, topsy-turvey world it’s no wonder that authors gravitate to the loss of innocence as a theme – particularly children turned feral. I recently finished The Luminous Republic and that book was still very much in my mind as I read A Children’s Bible.

In almost disconcertingly spare and emotionless prose (another commonality with The Luminous Republic), Lydia Millet paints a world where adults and children are distinctly at odds. The parents, close college friends, decide to go on an “offendingly long reunion” with their offspring. The children—held in an “analog prison” without access to their devices and screens— bear witness to their alcohol-soaked ennui about things that matter. Relegated to the attic, the children eventually hit upon a leisure pursuit: hiding their parentage until someone guesses what child goes with what parent.

At the center of the story is Eve (no irony in THAT name¡) who watches the world fall apart, with a Noah’s Ark flood, and a future that hints strongly of climate change, extinction, government inaction, and the inevitable “people with guns.” She assumes the that her parents did not—preparing her beloved younger brother for the consequences of a world that is imploding.

In one of the master strokes of this novel, that brother, Jack, relies on a children’s bible to gain understanding, but only after providing a carefully thought-out interpretation. “…if God stands for nature, then Jesus stands for science. That’s why they call Jesus God’s son. It doesn’t mean actual son. God doesn’t have sperm.” Later he says, “Science comes from nature. It’s kind of a branch of it. Like Jesus is a branch of God. And if we believe science is true, then we can act. And we’ll be saved.” For Jack, the earth, the climate, and the animals are Heaven’s part of the code.

No argument there from this reader. The way that Lydia Millet approaches the generational divide and the faith divide as apocalyptic chaos begins to gather steam is inventive and imaginative – just what I’ve come to expect from this very talented author. I personally found the comedic and fable-like tone to be distracting and I admired more than loved this book. But certainly, it is worth reading.
...more

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Dec 27, 2020 Elaine rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, 2020

I'm a huge Millet fan, and a devourer of all things dystopian and apocalyptic but this one felt a little paint by numbers for me. The Biblical parallels seemed pretty anvil-like (although there are undoubtedly more than I noticed), and the central theme - of a generation of adults who has failed the earth and its own children - is repeated with a rather monotonous insistence. There is no change or nuance in this dynamic.

Neither is there much variation or development in character among the gaggle ...more

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Feb 22, 2020 Story rated it really liked it

Shelves: dark-humour, dystopian, readwomen2020, novella, eco-fiction, liminal-spaces-foreign-lands

In an age where the young justifiably blame the old for the devastation of the planet, this dystopian tale of youthful alienation and environmental apocalypse resonated deeply with me.

A group of self-indulgent and wealthy parents, enjoying a two month summer sea-side debauch, are so dazed by sex, alcohol and drugs they barely notice the end-times arrive. Their children, far more canny, are left to fend for themselves.

The story, narrated by the sharp-eyed, cynical Eve, grabbed me from the first ...more

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Apr 01, 2021 James rated it really liked it

3.5 stars — My feelings about “Generation Z” can roughly be divided into Pre-Parkland vs. Post-Parkland .

(I'm referring to Parkland, Florida and the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 that inspired the student survivors to rise up and demand common-sense gun reform laws).

Pre-Parkland : Shallow, semi-literate spoiled brats always glued to their phones and counting Instagram followers.

Post-Parkland : Okay, maybe that was a little harsh. They're not that bad. The ...more

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May 05, 2020 Alison Hardtmann rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley

When a group of people who went to college together rent a house for the summer, all the kids are relegated to bunk in the attic. As they watch their parents behave very badly, they decide to band together and to refuse all parental involvement for the summer. Evie is fifteen and she keeps an eye on her little brother, her parents being all too willing to ignore the children in favor of drinking and being with their old friends. When disaster in the form of a hurricane strikes, the children disc ...more

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May 16, 2020 Erin Glover rated it it was amazing

Shelves: five-stars

I've never understood why Lydia Millet isn't more famous. This novel did not change my sentiment.

A group of families get together one summer and rent a mansion, the Great House, by the sea. From the very beginning, the children, most of whom are 16 and 17, do everything possible to distance themselves from their parents. They play a game the object of which is to prevent their friends from finding out to which parents they belong. "Hiding our parentage was a leisure pursuit, but one we took seri I've never understood why Lydia Millet isn't more famous. This novel did not change my sentiment.

A group of families get together one summer and rent a mansion, the Great House, by the sea. From the very beginning, the children, most of whom are 16 and 17, do everything possible to distance themselves from their parents. They play a game the object of which is to prevent their friends from finding out to which parents they belong. "Hiding our parentage was a leisure pursuit, but one we took seriously." Their disdain for their parents is palpable. When they tell their parents about the game so they'll play along, one of the kids insists the parents should "[t]hink of the attic [where all the kids sleep] as a reservation. Imagine you're the white conquerors who brutally massacred our people. And we're the Indians." Wow. These kids are serious about keeping their parents away from them, going so far as comparing them to murderers.

The kids create a system of accounting doling out merits and demerits to each other. "A merit was for an outrage successfully committed, a demerit for an act that should bring on humiliation. Juicy got merits for drooling into cocktails undetected, while Low got demerits for kissing up to a father." Aside from drinking to excess, and using cocaine the "worst of [the parents'] crimes was hard to pin down and therefore hard to punish correctly--the very quality of their being. The essence of their personalities." These kids are repulsed by their parents!

By page 12, we know the teens are aware of their youth and that it won't last. "But the idea that those garbage-like figures that tottered around the great house were a vision of what lay in store--hell no...Had they had goals once? A simple sense of self-respect?...They shamed us. They were a cautionary tale." The teens would do anything to avoid being like their parents.

In spite of the title, the book is not really about religion, although it has lots of biblical references. In fact, the book is told from the perspective of Eve (as in Adam and Eve). Evie is Jack's older sister. Jack carries around a children's bible a drunken mother gave him. The bible has lots of pictures and stories in it, including one about a talking snake and a lady who liked fruit, Jack tells Eve.

The Bible is kind of a prophecy. Many of the events and disasters in the Bible seem to occur to the children, not the least of which is a huge storm that floods the area and puts holes in the Great House. The kids meet Burl in the woods, a groundskeeper who offers to help the kids "escape" after the storm when the parents refuse to leave. But first Jack insists on gathering animals from the woods, and carrying them away from the Great House after carving their names into the flooded house, the "Ark". The kids intend to drive to Juicy's house, a ten-bedroom mansion in Westchester County. But they find the roads blocked with fallen trees and the roads are impassable. They end up at the farm Burl was caretaking. There are other adults there that the kids call angels, again a Biblical reference.

Jack's interest in the Bible is a bit scientific. He comes to realize that "God" is a code word for nature. "They say God but they mean nature...And we believe in nature." Indeed, the kids "respected the lake and stream and most of all the ocean." They believe in God.

This is where Millet gets at the gist of why the kids distrust the parents--they don't care about the environment. They were artsy, educated, and rich types who got sloppy when drunk but who were slugs without alcohol. The kids' association with the parents "diminished us and compromised our personal integrity." The final straw for the kids was when the parents dose themselves with ecstasy and it appears that an orgy of sorts occurs. Mostly, it seems the kids are upset the parents have left the world a shittier place choosing personal comfort over protecting the environment.

At the farm, horrors await much like the pictures in the Bible. Power lines and phone lines are down due to the storm. Roads are flooded. There is little cell service. From here, the story becomes one of survival of the fittest children. A kind of Lord of the Flies-type scenario.

Millet asks what the one-percenters would do without the shelter of wealth. She shows the parents as concerned only with money, while the children learn to survive in the shattered world of crashed stock markets and crazy weather they inherited from their selfish parents. Whereas wealth was the biggest asset for the parents, resilience becomes the biggest asset for the children. We get a glimpse of what the world looks like when angry teens wrench it from the hands of adults. These adults "functioned passably in a limited domain. Specifically adapted to life in their own small niches. Habitat specialists..." It seems they cannot survive in the "real" world.

Millet's writing is gorgeous. It's tinged with magical realism, especially at the end. I don't know how this book can be categorized. It's part thriller, part horror, part young adult novel. Whatever it is it's a fantastic book that highlights the atrocity of crimes against nature and the sole pursuit of money and how those actions affect younger generations. ...more

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Apr 01, 2020 jo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: spec-fantasy-sf, kids, netgalley, ww3

wowzy this book is out! you can read it too! (i missed the subtext entirely when i read it. i'm so ashamed).

______

i can't even begin to imagine what the world will be like when this book comes out. let me take this back, since it's only a month from now. i imagine it will be pretty much as it is now, except many more people dead.

which leads me to say, maybe don't read this if anxiety keeps you up nights. wait a bit. read whatever makes you sleep. escape.

lydia millet has been writing about the wowzy this book is out! you can read it too! (i missed the subtext entirely when i read it. i'm so ashamed).

______

i can't even begin to imagine what the world will be like when this book comes out. let me take this back, since it's only a month from now. i imagine it will be pretty much as it is now, except many more people dead.

which leads me to say, maybe don't read this if anxiety keeps you up nights. wait a bit. read whatever makes you sleep. escape.

lydia millet has been writing about the demise of the world since at least the first book of hers i read, How the Dead Dream, which came out in 2009. HTDD is eerie and spooky, but, well, it was also ten years ago so i put back on the shelf it came from and tried to forget about it.

how fast we are killing the planet!

most of this book is, in fact, a little un-millety. it's narrated by a teenage girl, evie, who is all manners of sweet, and even though the demise of the world is here in spades, evie's and her friends' sweetness and uncanny political correctness, resourcefulness, and moral rectitude infuse the bulk of the book with a lovely tenderness. but of course millet will be millet so things are also magicky and strange and eerie and, well, as i said, read at your peril.

our writers are our prophets. they and the young'uns, who'll have to figure out how to live when everything goes to shit. at some point one of the young people in this fable says to the adults, "why didn't you do anything?"

the adult says, "what could i have done?"

"you could have gotten angry." (i'm paraphrasing and possibly inventing because it was late last night/this morning).

am i angry enough? i am angry plenty. could i do more? i honestly don't think so.

these are questions all of us must answer. we must be angry enough and we must do all we can. and if we are, and do, then we must read books like this and say, "i am scared but i'm doing all i can and it will have to do." then, we must get a good night's sleep because there is work to do and we need all the rest we can get. ...more

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Aug 08, 2020 Janet rated it it was ok

Maybe it's because I'm a parent but I found this book to be simplistic and insulting. It's a story about the end of the world brought on by climate change where the children are portrayed as intelligent, responsible, organized and mature and the parents are essentially stoners who have allowed this thing to happen.

Climate change had been happening long before the current crop of parents were out of diapers themselves and the reasons are more political than personal. It is very much tied to capit ...more

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Jun 10, 2020 Barbara rated it really liked it

Shelves: adult-fiction, suspense

3.5 Stars: “A Children’s Bible” by Lydia Millet is at heart a climate change cautionary tale with a “Lord of the Rings” spirit. The children in this story hold their parents primarily responsible for all the environmental ills, accusing them of hedonism and ignorance. This is almost a dystopian tale of the future with climate change accounting for the destruction of the earth.

The story isn’t all bleak. Our narrator is Evie, a teen on a summer vacation at “the big house” with multiple families. T ...more

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Jun 12, 2020 Samantha rated it it was ok

I can’t decide if releasing a speculative fiction novel about a pandemic during a pandemic is the best marketing ever or the worst.

Personally, I didn’t particularly care for it. And do I need to add a pandemic trigger warning to this? I long for the days of 6 months ago when no such question would have even occurred to me.

But pandemic or not, the review must go on.

The Children’s Bible has its moments. The humor is quite good for the most part, as are many of the wry observations made by our ch ...more

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May 19, 2020 Proustitute (somewhat here, somewhat there) rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2020, contemporary-fiction, science-and-speculative-fiction, american-literature

Once we had let them do everything for us—assumed they would. Then came the day we didn’t want them to.

Still later we found out that they hadn’t done everything at all. They’d left out the important part.

And it was known as: the future.

An eerily prescient parable about the schisms between parents and children, as—headed into an unknown (and increasingly violent) future due to climate change, a hinted-at pandemic, and government inaction—parents drink to drown their sorrows and forget their p ...more

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Sep 24, 2020 Darryl Suite rated it liked it

This book took a long time to get going. It took about 40 pages for me to get into its rhythm. I think it had to do with the jaded tone of the narrator. It slowed things down and it became tiring after awhile. By the way, jaded and deadpan narrators in these kind of stories seem to be trendy right now (Severance, Weather).

A Children's Bible did manage to go into really surprising directions. And ⅔ into the book was actually pretty terrifying. But there was something missing. To be honest, I thin ...more

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May 30, 2020 Jerrie (redwritinghood) rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars Millet is obviously a strong writer. The messages here are ones that are prominent these days - the irresponsible adults ruining the environment and the future of the world for the younger generations. The book is vague on the details, but climate change leads to a cataclysmic storm that the characters survive, but somehow very quickly disrupts society. A lot of the narrative from there on out follows a Hollywood movie-type arc of societal breakdown and a battle for survival. The eleme ...more

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Feb 18, 2021 Bianca rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

4.5

A Children's Bible is an unusual book that tickled me mentally in all the right places. It gripped me and delighted me from the first paragraph and continued to surprise me through to the last sentence.
I wouldn't have picked this to read because of its title and assumption that it might be preachy and/or religious. After discovering that it had been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and after reading Marchpane's raving review, I overcame my prejudice and borrowed this short novel ...more

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Nov 10, 2020 Alex rated it did not like it

Mind-numbingly dull.

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Mar 11, 2020 Gianna Lorandi rated it liked it

Shelves: good-but-not-great, dystopia, it-was-good, literary-fiction, love-sarcasm

3.5 Stars. Interesting novel about a too-cool-for-school bunch of teenagers going on a summer holiday with their parents. The parent's only interests were drugs and alcohol, leaving the kids to fend for themselves which they were quite happy with.
Kind of a dystopian and sarcastic atmosphere mixed with a strong climate change message, I found this book quite unique in a way.
Still in two minds about whether I liked or not but certainly a refreshing read.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy. ...more

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Feb 21, 2021 Terri rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-fiction, awards-nom-national-book

A dark satire on the generation gap, modern life, global warning, parenting, youth and denial. I was laughing but also crying/cringing throughout the book. Poignant, bittersweet and oh so witty, Lydia Millet writes like a dream. Four stars.

flag 12 likes · Like · see review

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About Lydia Millet

Lydia Millet

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Lydia Millet has written twelve works of fiction. She has won awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her books have been longlisted for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and named as New York Times Notable Books. Her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize fina ...more

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Quotes from A Children's Bible

“A FEW PETS had come with us for the summer: three dogs and a cat, a pissed-off Siamese with a skin condition. Dandruff. We dressed up the dogs in costumes from a wicker chest, but could not dress the cat. She scratched.” — 1 likes

“It was them and not them, maybe the ones they’d never been. I could almost see those others standing in the garden where the pea plants were, feet planted between the rows. They stood without moving, their faces glowing with some shine a long time gone. A time before I lived. Their arms hung at their sides. They’d always been there, I thought blearily, and they’d always wanted to be more than they were. They should always be thought of as invalids, I saw. Each person, fully grown, was sick or sad, with problems attached to them like broken limbs. Each one had special needs. If you could remember that, it made you less angry. They’d been carried along on their hopes, held up by the chance of a windfall. But instead of a windfall there was only time passing. And all they ever were was themselves. Still they had wanted to be different. I would assume that from now on, I told myself, wandering back into the barn. What people wanted to be, but never could, traveled along beside them. Company.” — 1 likes

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