A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

 

Amy  

fiction

In A Children’s Bible, a group of teenagers and smaller kids are left to entertain themselves while their parents spend their summer reunion vacation at a large rental house. As expected, the kids get into a fair bit of mischief. Later, the story deepens to indicate some imminent destruction of life as they know it. The kids feel this is due to a lack of concern, improvement, or preparation by previous generations.  Disgusted by their parents’ behavior and negligence, they run away more than once. However, they are impeded by weather conditions and end up being stuck in a dangerous situation.

The framework described above is only part of the story. There are a ton of references to bible stories—some overt and some which require more thought to see the parallels.  As someone who is, admittedly, not a bible expert, I was able to pick up quite a few references. But I’m sure I missed many. I won’t give them away because trying to identify these references was the most entertaining part of the experience of reading this book. Other than having that game to play, I found this short novel perplexing. Sometimes I questioned what was going on. It was frequently bizarre and unrealistic (much like the bible, I suppose). But it took a few sharp turns, morphing into something different than it had been.

I think I would’ve liked it more if the story was not so odd. It tries to be a book of warning about climate change yet it falls short by being vague and unfocused in this regard. The ending was sort of left dribbling out its last lifeblood without explaining anything other than the fact that older generations have left an injured world for their kids to inherit. That is not new information in and of itself. I was left feeling that the moral of the story failed because it was buried in the unbelievable, unlikely tale.

During our book club discussion which took place after I wrote the review above, I heard an interpretation that actually made a lot more sense of the tale. The parents serve as a representation of the big companies/governments who actually have power to significantly improve the global environment but have chosen, instead, to only sometimes take action of minimal steps and largely ignore the human population's concerns and future. That makes me appreciate Lydia Millet's intentions more but her main message was buried underneath all the meaningless, distracting religious symbolism. So I am sticking with my original rating.

The audiobook was narrated by Xe Sands. As with the other novel I’ve heard that she narrated, she sometimes spoke too quickly and/or not clearly enough so that I missed what she said and had to rewind. She went too quickly sometimes when throwing around the names of the many characters, making it difficult for me to track who was doing what. Her voice acting was good and she had a decent vocal repertoire, but the other complaints keep her grade at a B.