The New York Times Book Review - Jonathan Dee
To Jack, the Bible is an old book found in a decaying summer house, an artifact to try to make sense of, a missive from some lost world. With brilliant restraint, Millet conceives her own low-key "bible" the same way. It's not a history, not a tract or a jeremiad; the truth it bears is not going to overwrite the future. It's a tale in which whoever or whatever comes after us might recognize, however imperfectly, a certain continuity: an exotic but still decodable shred of evidence from the lost world that is the world we are living in right now.
Publishers Weekly
01/20/2020
Millet follows up Sweet Lamb of Heaven with a lean, ironic allegory of climate change and biblical comeuppance. A group of friends, successful “artsy and educated types,” plan an “offensively long reunion” at a summer house “built by robber barons in the 19th century,” somewhere on the East Coast. They bring along their children, ranging in age from prepubescent to 17, who devise inventive ways to ignore them. With the young teenage narrator, Evie, Millet perfectly captures the blend of indifference and scorn with which the teenagers view their boozy parents, emblematic of humanity’s dithering in the face of environmental catastrophe: “They didn’t do well with long-term warnings. Even medium-term.” After a massive storm interrupts the summer idyll and brings looting and riots to New York and Boston, the parents lose themselves to booze and cocaine and the children flee with a menagerie of rescued animals, seeking refuge at a farmhouse. This lurid section, in which they are besieged by armed raiders searching for food, is shaky, and allusions to biblical tales such as Noah’s Ark and the Ten Commandments feel facile, but the novel regains its footing once parents and children reunite, with the children calling the shots. Millet’s look at intergenerational strife falls short of her best work. (May)
Wall Street Journal Magazine
"To call it a generational allegory seems like an understatement. Millet is one of the most fascinating novelists working."
Literary Hub - Jonny Diamond
"If you think it’s hard to find original voices in contemporary fiction, you’re not really reading properly—Millet is one such voice: comic, erudite, humane."
Booklist - Donna Seaman
"As bewitching, unflinching, wry, and profoundly attuned to the state of the planet as ever, supremely gifted Millet tells a commanding and wrenching tale of cataclysmic change and what it will take to survive."
New Yorker
"Millet mordantly captures the complacency of older generations in the face of apocalypse, and the righteous anger, endurance, and practicality of the young."
Boston Globe - Jeffrey Ann Goldie
"[C]ompellingly written, compact [and] slyly funny."
Entertainment Weekly
"Blazingly witty."
Ron Charles
"[A] blistering little classic…Millet’s wit and her penchant for strange twists produce the kind of climate fiction we need: a novel that moves beyond the realm of reporting and editorial, a story that explores how alarming and baffling it feels to endure the destruction of one’s world. Take this book, eat it up."
New York Times Book Review
"This superb novel begins as a generational comedy...and turns steadily darker, as climate collapse and societal breakdown encroach. But Millet’s light touch never falters; in this time of great upheaval, she implies, our foundational myths take on new meaning and hope."
Electric Lit - Halimah Marcus
"An American chaos story about a climate-changed future…A Children’s Bible gains strength from its contradictions. It is hilarious yet tender; absurd yet chillingly realistic, nostalgic yet prescient."
Los Angeles Times - Carolyn Kellogg
"[D]arkly funny and painfully sharp."
Library Journal
12/01/2019
Millet's first novel since the National Book Award long-listed Sweet Lamb of Heaven demonstrates her penchant for insightfully off-kilter scenarios as a group of preternaturally grown-up children make do while grudgingly vacationing with their heedless parents at a lakeside mansion. When a violent storm descends, the children are driven from the estate, and narrator Eve seeks to protect her little brother as the landscape increasingly recalls scenes from his beloved picture Bible.
NOVEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
Xe Sands offers an excellent performance of this timely and thought-provoking audiobook. A commentary on climate change, this novel blends a view of contemporary life with a warning about a bleak future. Sands voices Evie, a teenage narrator whose dim view of adults is well justified. With her peers, she must take charge when a summer stay at a coastal mansion becomes a battle for survival. Sands balances an authentic adolescent attitude with a thoughtful, responsible tone that reflects the side of Evie that is beyond her years. Her Evie is a coolheaded figure who inspires listeners to wonder about Millet's message. The dialogue is realistic, and Sands's pacing is superb. Millet offers much to consider in this unique novel, and Sands brings the story to life without excess drama or sentimentality. L.B.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
