A Children's Bible (2020) by Lydia Millet

Teenagers left with foolish parents while the world crumbles around them. It's an apocalyptic tale that feels closer than it is far.

If you ignore the red eyes of the animals, the cover of Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible appears like a heartfelt Americana children’s story. Read three pages in and the cuddly American dream will be crushed. In the idealistic Thomas Kincaid kind of America parents are always unwavering and dependable. However, A Children’s Bible is a realistic reminder that our parents are actually faulty human beings. But the parents in this novel sink to new depths of depravity–choosing to neglect their children, ignoring their imminent destruction, and diving deep into heinous drugs and infidelity as coping mechanisms–all while a freakish storm is literally tearing the roof of their house. And this is just the beginning of their troubles.

A Children's Bible has a teenage protagonist, but it’s far from a Young Adult novel. It’s themes and content are mature and dark.The setting is a huge woodsy New England summer house. I lost track, but I think there’s about six to seven families and around eight to twelve children depending on the time. The parents have rented this luxurious house on a lake far away from civilization. The children range from 8 to 17 years old and even the youngest ones have already learned that their parents are more interested in booze, drugs, and gossip than reading bedtime stories (or even where their children sleep at night). The teenagers play “game” in which they try to keep secret which parents are theirs. The fact that the children don’t already know this basic information is evidence of the appalling gap between parents and children. The monstrous storm hits their house hard and causes serious damage. And herein lies the arch of the novel: The children attempt to problem solve the situation while the parents do nothing but fall into a pit of ineptitude ranging from simple laziness to ancient Greek god Dioyesies style debauchery.

Evie tells the story. She’s a self-conscious and contemplative teen who reveals little about herself and focuses most of her attention on watching over her younger brother Jack. Early in the story Jack finds a Children’s Bible and the novel’s plot resembles iconic biblical events like floods, plagues, wise men, bloody sheep, and more. By using a biblical trajectory Millet might be trying to emphasize the solemnity of the novel's underling issue: climate change.

The children recognize the seriousness of not only the storm but also the following catastrophes: “Crashing stock markets were a factor, and weather…Also droughts and heat waves. Cold fronts and hot fronts, defunct trade routes. Everywhere seemed to be in flux…and ruined crops were ‘destabilizing’ the markets” (p. 207). Millet reminds us that our world is based on interconnected-whole economies supporting billions of people, And when these sacred capitalistic systems are tilted one way or another it subverts our entire way of life and leaves all of us exposed to the stuff of apocalyptic nightmares.

A Children’s Bible is a bit reminiscent of Cormack McCarthy's The Road minus the cannibalism. And while The Road takes place at an undisclosed time in the future, A Children’s Bible feels as near as next week. Plus it’s nightmarish tone is punctuated by one existential fear factor: Being completely abandoned by our parents in times of great distress. Even McCarthy inThe Road keeps the children-parent bond strong.

Millet’s novel is a reminder that sometimes the power of fiction lies not in what is always immediately accurate today, but pushes the envelope of what is possible for tomorrow. Like a prophet Millet looks into the not-so-far future of a world crumbling under the weight of climate change because the grown-ups have chosen to ignore it. And it’s no mistake that Millet’s adult characters are wealthy, elitist, educated artists and professors. They do little but blame politicians and others instead of taking any responsibility for their apathetic attitudes and inaction to stop climate change. Evie remarks that “When their habitats collapsed they had no familiar terrain. No map. No Equipment. No tools” (p. 206). They’re like hapless babes. The children are realists while the “parents still believed in Emergency Services” (p. 189). The kids are forced to navigate a lawless land on their own.

Millet’s style is quick and requires that the reader fill in some gaps. A Children’s Bible is told from a mix of third-person and first-person perspectives with Evie as the narrator. Neither Millet nor Evie spend much time introducing the children characters. Most of what we learn comes from dialogue and tidbits of commentary. Evie lumps together the parents essentially as one monolith of uselessness. I empathized with the children characters; however, I never developed a close connection with them. My attention was drawn to the plot and theme instead of character development. Overall, if you enjoy stories with a post-apocalyptic premise, climate change, and dysfunctional families, A Children's Bible might interest you. The suspense builds steadily and the children characters are smug, witty, and all around believable teenagers.