A Children’s Bible | Lydia Millett

 

A group of children are holidaying with their parents in a crumbling lakeside mansion. Having long since diagnosed the adults as boozy, self-absorbed, and allergic to consequence, they retreat into a shadow society of their own, closer to feral than filial. When the storms come and the lights go out, the grown-ups drink through the apocalypse while the children, led by the deadpan Eve and her strange, prophetic little brother Jack, start actually doing something about survival. Millett’s genius is to smuggle an entire eco-apocalypse into a story of Genesis playfully rewritten by the generation stuck cleaning up after their forebears. A compelling, unsentimental, and quietly devastating read.