A Children’s Bible

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s sublime new novel—her first since the National Book Award–longlisted Sweet Lamb of Heaven—follows a group of eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their parents at a lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their elders, who pass their days in a hedonistic stupor, the children are driven out into a chaotic landscape after a great storm descends on the summer estate. The story’s narrator, Eve, devotes herself to the safety of her beloved little brother as events around them begin to mimic scenes from his cherished picture Bible. Millet, praised as “unnervingly talented” (San Francisco Chronicle), has produced a heartbreaking story of the legacy of climate change denial. Her parable of the coming generational divide offers a lucid vision of what awaits us on the other side of Revelation.