‘A Children’s Bible’ Delivers on Climate Angst and Biblical References

How do you tell a coming of age story in a future-less world?

That’s the challenge Lydia Millet takes on in “A Children’s Bible,” her new contribution to the growing canon of climate change fiction. The novel follows teenaged Evie and her little brother Jack, who spend the summer together in a lake house along with the children of their parents’ college friends. While the parents spend their days in the house blissfully drunk, the kids wander throughout nature, desperately avoiding their parents to the point of competing to see who can hide from them the longest.

The vacation, however, is tinted by a sense of foreboding. Something is about to give. As Evie remarks, “At that time in my personal life, I was coming to grips with the end of the world. The familiar world, anyway.” Sure enough, when a huge storm brings flooding and destruction, the world as she knows it does end, and Evie and the others find themselves navigating a new chaotic terrain.

The most effective part of this novel is the structure, which follows the general narrative framework of the Bible. The Biblical framework works so well because it allows for the story to exist in the context of past crises humanity has faced. There’s a flood followed by a plague, an exodus, a surprise birth (which happens just a couple miles east of a town called Bethlehem). All the while Jack, using the Bible, tries to draw connections between these events.

Millet’s choice to diverge from the specific plot points of the Bible forces both the reader and the characters to reinterpret these ancient stories of human experience to meet the moment they face. Sometimes these references can feel a little forced and heavy-handed, but they never come off as proselytizing. Instead, Millet’s references to the Bible paint a complicated relationship between the resources of the past and the possibilities of an uncharted future.

The other great strength of the novel is Millet’s reinterpretation of coming of age tropes. At first glance, “A Children’s Bible” can seem like a pretty run-of-the-mill coming of age story. The major emotional threads of the story are Evie’s feelings of disillusionment with society, disconnection from her parents, and her desire to understand her role in the world — all classic elements of the genre. In fact, with her wry tone, lack of sentimentality, and close relationship with her innocent younger sibling, Evie is strikingly similar to Holden Caulfield.

What seperates “A Children’s Bible” from the books that came before it is that though the story is related through the eyes of Evie, the book is less about her coming of age and more about the coming of age of the climate change generation. Evie often eschews the first person, using “we” to refer to the collective actions and feelings of all the kids. While Evie and the rest of the kids certainly have issues with their individual parents, most of their resentment is towards them as an age group who knew about climate change and did nothing to stop it. As Evie remarks, “We knew who was responsible, of course: it was a done deal before we were born.”

There’s a sense, furthermore, in the book that the parents have not only let down their children, but that they are over-depending on them to save the world from situations of crisis. Any Millennial or Gen Z-er who has been told by someone older than them that “Your generation will save us” will recognize this feeling. As a veteran novelist who has published 12 books previously and is in her 50s, Millet's ability to accurately capture the feelings of the younger generation is a triumph.

Though “A Children’s Bible” delivers on big ideas and beautiful prose, it lacks compelling characters. Evie, the narrator, remains an interesting voice throughout the book, but her distanced attitude towards the other characters makes it difficult for the reader to gain a good sense of their personality and even harder to care about them. Sometimes Millet’s vague characterizations work, most notably with the parents who represent the repugnance of an older generation, more than they carry actual emotional weight. For the majority of the book, however, the side-characters come off as so comically evil, or good, or stupid, that the stakes of the situation feel lower than they are.

Its flaws notwithstanding, “A Children’s Bible” is a beautiful and worthwhile read. While it's not exactly hopeful, the book provides its readers with a sense that meaning can be sought even when the world falls apart.