A Children's Bible

by Lydia Millet

Literary Fiction

Climate Fiction

Dystopian

224 Pages

"Millet has written something extraordinary—A Children's Bible is both darkly satirical and achingly tender, a climate allegory that feels prophetic and a generational portrait that cuts to the bone."

Synopsis

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet's sublime novel—her first since the National Book Award longlisted 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 both neglected and suffocated. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders—including Eve, who narrates the story—decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside. As the scenes of devastation begin to mimic events in the dog-eared picture Bible carried around by Eve's beloved little brother, she devotes herself to keeping him safe from harm. A Children's Bible is a prophetic, heartbreaking story of generational divide—and a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation. Millet crafts a parable about climate catastrophe, parental abdication, and the children left to inherit a broken world, blending biblical allegory with contemporary social satire to devastating effect.

Our Take

Lydia Millet has long been one of our most important writers on environmental catastrophe, and A Children's Bible represents her most focused and powerful work on the subject. The novel operates on multiple levels simultaneously: as biting satire of wealthy, self-absorbed parents who've checked out of reality; as climate allegory depicting the world young people are inheriting; and as biblical retelling where the flood and exodus stories play out in contemporary America. What makes the book extraordinary is Millet's tonal control—she balances dark comedy with genuine tenderness, particularly in Eve's devotion to her younger brother and the children's fierce loyalty to each other. The parents are monstrous in their obliviousness, yet Millet never loses sight of the children's vulnerability or the tragedy of a generation forced into premature adulthood by their elders' failures. Written before the pandemic but published in 2020, the novel feels eerily prescient about generational rupture and environmental reckoning. Millet's prose is spare and precise, creating an unsettling atmosphere where normalcy slides into catastrophe almost imperceptibly. Readers who appreciated Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven or Jenny Offill's Weather will recognize Millet's ability to create literary fiction that grapples with climate anxiety without becoming didactic. For anyone seeking a novel that captures the moral failures of our moment while remaining deeply humane, A Children's Bible is essential, haunting, and unforgettable.