"A Children's Bible" by Lydia Millet

I finished A Children's Bible before Ready Player Two, but busyness pushed writing the review aside, and I also found I wasn't quite sure what to say about Millet's novel. It's a weird little book, unsettling but without a didactic message.

The novel begins with an assortment of jaded teenagers at a summer house with their parents. They're hugely disdainful of their embarrassing and drunk parents, so much so that they make a game of identifying whose parents are whose. The last person to have a parent correctly identified as theirs wins. Then a terrifying hurricane ushers in the apocalypse. The kids are left largely on their own, working for survival against the elements and human threats. The book's title comes from the children's Bible that Jack, the younger brother of narrator Eve, carries around. It's a clear nod that much of the book is allegorical (from Eve's name to the great flood to the "plagues" they face), though I'll confess I'm not clear on the allegory's meaning. 

For instance, Jack works to save the animals a la Noah, but there's little indication the animals need saving. In fact, Jack has to be told to let them go when another sees they're suffering. There's a baby born in a barn, but the baby has no real effect other than bringing out the parental care of his sister. Millet isn't trying to make any religious message, a point emphasized when Jack announces he's "decoded" the message in the Bible. God is nature, and Jesus is science. Believing in Jesus thus means believing in science.

I read that Millet works in environmental policy, so it would be easy to see this as a direct warning about climate change and the like. But I don't think Millet is being so un-subtle. Jack's announcement has no effect on the other characters or the plot. It's not a grand revelation that changes the world.

Instead, the book focuses more on how we make our way in the world, the choices we make to exist in or escape the reality around us. The most withering criticism seems to be for the kids' parents, who exist in a boozy and drug-filled haze, barely able to eek out concern for their children. Their lives are vapid and meaningless. It's hard at first to see their privileged children's lives as significantly better, despite their disdain for their parents and their Peter Pan-like desire to avoid growing up. Nonetheless, the children do ultimately take charge and live with what they're given. They accept the environmental truth around them, and instead of resisting the inevitable, work with it. Perhaps that's Millet's environmental message after all.