A Children's Bible

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.

“"With this slim yet potent book, [Millet] shows it is even possible to coax pleasure and beauty from the uncomfortable work of highlighting unfortunate truths."”

"An American author steps out of the shadows with a dystopian novel of great power." -- Adam Begley - The Sunday Times
"The pandemic amplifies the resonance of this brilliant end-of-days escapade… if the conclusion doesn’t leave you with goosebumps, then you should probably check your pulse." -- Stephanie Cross - The Daily Mail
"New England children caught up in an apocalyptic storm have to fend for themselves in this powerful novel by a talented American writer who has often flown under the literary radar." -- 100 Best Holiday Reads - The Sunday Times
"... in A Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet maps the consequences of an environmental apocalypse with unnerving, fable-like simplicity." -- The Best Novels of 2020 - The Telegraph
"A haunting dystopia about climate change denial... Funny and sobering, Millet's 13th novel sees a group of adults settle into a mansion for a heady summer, idling away their time with drugs and sex." -- Best Paperbacks: March 2021 - The Guardian
"A Children’s Bible... begins in a crumbling mansion where a group of bored, surly, privileged teens are spending the summer sequestered with their ne’er do well parents. Just as it begins to seem like a summer teen romp, the story takes a dramatic turn in the shape of a cataclysmic storm. What follows is brilliant—and feels both inevitable and strangely magical. How those teens tell the story, which transforms this climate emergency into a brutally honest, funny and moving indictment of the generations leaving a broken world for them to inherit, is especially refreshing." -- Diane Cook, The Best Books of 2020 - The Evening Standard
"This superb novel begins as a generational comedy — a pack of kids and their middle-aged parents coexist in a summer share — and turns steadily darker, as climate collapse and societal breakdown encroach. But Millet’s light touch never falters; in this time of great upheaval, she implies, our foundational myths take on new meaning and hope." -- 100 Notable Books of 2020 - The New York Times Book Review
"Here's an idea: As the world falls apart all around us, why not read a book about the world falling apart in a totally different way? Not just any book, though, it kind of has to be A Children's Bible, the brilliant Lydia Millet's latest, in which the oblivious destructiveness of a certain self-indulgent generation of adults is rightfully skewered, as a new generation of hyper-mature teens must figure out how to live without any concrete kind of guidance." -- Best Books of 2020, So Far - Refinery29
"A perfect novel for now." -- Metro

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. Atavists is her third work of short fiction. She lives outside Tucson, Arizona.

Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for FictionOne of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the YearNamed one of the best novels of the year by Time, Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Tribune, Esquire, BBC, and many othersNational Bestseller"A blistering little classic." --Ron Charles, Washington Post

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