common1 's review for:

A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

4.0

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This slender novel is richly layered, exploring a wide range of interesting topics: coming of age, religion, climate change, families, alcohol and drugs, sexuality, societal breakdown, entropy, and social classes, among others. Eve, who appears to be a 14- or 15-year-old teenager, is the narrator of the novel, set on the east coast shoreline, somewhere near the Appalachian Trail. Her parents and their friends from their college days have rented a house for the summer in what seems to be their last get-together. In time, the parents and the children shift roles. The parents become hard drinking, promiscuous, drug users and the children responsible caregivers. A children's Bible, the central metaphor in the novel, is a book given to Eve's nine year old brother, a book he enjoys, though not as much as some of his other favorite books, including the George and Martha books by James Marshall. As you might expect, many of the stories in A Children's Bible come to life in the novel, some with a heavy hand but others with a lighter touch. This seems to be one of those books that readers either 'get' right away and enjoy for its many clever conceits and fine writing or dismiss as too judgmental and enviro-political. I happily count myself among the former.