A children's bible : a novel
(Book)

"An indelible and haunting new novel that explores the loss of childhood, inter-generational conflict, and humanity's complacency in the face of its own demise. Lydia Millet's multilayered new novel -- her first since the National Book Award Longlist SweetLamb of Heaven -- follows a group of children and their families on summer vacation at a lakeside mansion. The teenage narrator, Eve, and the other children are contemptuous of their parents, who spend the days and nights in drunken stupor. This tension heightens when a great storm arrives and throws the house and its residents into chaos. Named for a picture Bible given to Eve's little brother Jack, A Children's Bible is loosely structured around events and characters that often appear in collections of Bible stories intended for young readers. These narrative touchstones are embedded in a backdrop of environmental and psychological distress as the children reject the parents for their emotional and moral failures-in part as normal teenagers must, and in part for their generation's passivity and denial in the face of cataclysmic change. In A Children's Bible, Millet offers brilliant commentary on the environment and human weakness and a vision of what awaits us on the other side of Revelations."--,Provided by publisher.