A Children’s Bible Commentary
SPOILERS AHEAD
The prolific Lydia Millet’s novel A Children’s Bible is a stirring, witty, and terrifying experience.
We follow a group of 12 kids on vacation with their parents in a mansion by the water. Immediately, we witness the children’s contempt for their parents— parents who are constantly drunk, high, and/or negligent— a disgrace. The vacation begins normally and the children are engrossed in a game of hiding the identities of their parents from one another. Whenever a parent tries to engage with their child, the child evades, dodging the close watch of the other children, looking for any signs of relation. The last child to keep their parents a mystery wins. But soon, a storm comes, completely changing the course of the vacation and the children’s lives. It becomes a story of survival, one that is led by the children. The adults, meanwhile, wallow in illness, drunkenness, and a devastating apathy. Their incompetence borders on humorous, except for the sad fact of child neglect. The story answers the question: What would your parents do at the end of the world?
What makes the book both funny and brutal is the children’s ideology regarding parents and adults in general: They are useless, weak, and guilty— guilty of passing down a climate crisis to their children without a fight, a broken world that the children are forced to fix on their own. The children know they are better off without their parents. Safer, even. Throughout the story, we watch them repeatedly break away from the adults, seeking utopia made by their own hands, only to be reeled back in again, into the parents’ sphere of influence, to be disappointed.
The book does an excellent job of reminding you why you didn’t like adults (at least, some adults) as a kid. And why you still don’t. Millet’s way of writing the children’s POV isn’t cliche like in so many other texts where grown ups write about kids in a condescending manner, or in such a way as to strip them of humanity. While the adults in the story wither, the children are full selves with a diverse range of traits: kindness, stubbornness, compassion, pragmatism, loyalty, and, at times, cruelty. They continuously step up in the face of horrifying adversity, in an adult’s world, showing more maturity than those twice their age.
Reading A Children’s Bible makes me want to be a better adult. Want to know what scared me the most reading this book? Seeing myself in the grown-ups. Significantly, I’m not a parent. When the children in the story encounter adults without kids, they occupy a different space than the parents.
“We liked the angels. They hadn’t brought us into the world— they hadn’t brought anyone into it— and in that fact we felt a bond. In that fact we were equals.”
In the children’s view, I’m closer to an equal. But it doesn’t mean I’m without faults that should be addressed. Sometimes, seeing yourself reflected in others’ eyes helps you discern where you can do better. But don’t get it twisted: this book is not a lecture. You don’t feel preached to. It’s more like a mirror— a very critical mirror. While you swallow that pill, there is a humor that washes it down like water. I didn’t expect to find myself laughing out loud reading this book. But I did.
Aside from being funny, the children, especially the youngest ones, are particularly profound. Our main character’s little brother is gifted a copy of the Bible, written and illustrated for children, which he reads throughout the story. Along the way, he discovers that the Bible is “a mystery”, with clues hidden for close readers. He decodes and solves it. First, he figures out that God actually means “nature”. Then, he decides that Jesus is actually “science”, which helps us understand nature. (I won’t spoil the Holy Ghost for you.) The child’s perceptiveness is striking and provides the true heart of the story, where all the threads and themes come together.
I gobbled up this book in a day, hungry for more. For those of you who want a good survival story with unique perspective, with horror, and with humor, give this one a try. Although I haven’t seen all of the TV show Yellowjackets, only the first episode, I feel like if you enjoyed that show, you’ll enjoy this book, too.