Book Summary and Reviews of A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

A Children's Bible

A Novel

by Lydia Millet

  • Readers' Rating (5):
  • Published:
  • Feb 2021, 240 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

An indelible novel of teenage alienation and adult complacency in an unraveling world.

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 suffocated at the same time. 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 her beloved little brother, Eve 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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"[A] tense, prophetic…[and] gripping page-turner." ―Library Journal (starred review)

"As bewitching, unflinching, wry, and profoundly attuned to the state of the planet as ever, supremely gifted Millet tells a commanding and wrenching tale of cataclysmic change and what it will take to survive." ―Booklist

"Eco-fiction dystopias often make our climate future outright calamities of tidal waves and massive tree die-offs. Millet…knows what's coming is likely to be more subtle, and the slow-motion collapse she imagines in her latest novel is what makes it so harrowing." ―Kirkus Reviews

"If you think it's hard to find original voices in contemporary fiction, you're not really reading properly―Millet is one such voice: comic, erudite, humane." ―Literary Hub

This information about A Children's Bible was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Lydia Millet Author Biography

Photo: Ivory Orchid Photography

Lydia Millet is the author of A Children's Bible, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten book of the Year. Her first work of short fiction, Love in Infant Monkeys, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010; her second, Fight No More (2018), won an American Academy of Arts and Sciences short fiction award. Ativists is her third work of short fiction. She lives outside Tucson, Arizona.

Link to Lydia Millet's Website

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