Dear Great Book Guru, With cold nights and chilly days upon us, my thoughts turn to a good read - a novel with a message…  Any thoughts?     A Chilled Reader

 Dear Chilled Reader, I recently read a short, widely admired novel you might enjoy: A CHILDREN’S BIBLE by Lydia Millet. We follow a group of twelve children - mostly teenagers - who are spending the summer together with their parents in a sprawling lakeside house on the East Coast of the United States. The children are contemptuous of their parents’ languid lifestyle. When a spectacularly destructive storm hits, the children leave the adults behind and head out on what looks like a merry adventure. They soon realize the storm is not a local phenomenon but is impacting the entire world…. the apocalypse has begun. Eva the narrator takes charge and tries to save the children particularly Jack - her young brother - who has brought along a children’s version of the Bible - a castaway from one of the adults. Jack is obsessed with the book and begins to see biblical allusions to the events around them. The children come to believe Jack’s Bible is coded to help them understand the cataclysm the world is experiencing, and we come to see this novel as a prophetic testament to the unraveling of the cosmos because of eons of neglect and malfeasance.  Frightening yet highly recommended!