“Maybe they didn’t know the rules,” said Jack.
“Of course they did, little one,” said the owner. “Everyone knows the rules.”
Wow! What a metaphor for taking care of the children and the future. This book has made many “Best of 2020” lists, including the New York Times and NPR. It’s a National Book Award Finalist and featured by many book clubs. It is an easy read with many layers of meaning. Evie, the teenaged storyteller, has been made responsible for her younger brother Jack while her parents and a group of their college friends enjoy a college reunion of sorts. Evie and other offspring are left to fend for themselves in a rented mansion located on a lake.
The parents act irresponsibly by drinking, doing drugs, having sex, and otherwise neglecting the children’s needs. Millet portrays the children, especially the teenagers, as more responsible, purposeful, and deliberate in their actions and attitudes. The youngsters are pragmatic; their parents are idealistic, unrealistic, and self-centered.
The story is a cautionary tale, a parable that uses allegory to warn about climate change and the neglectful practices of those who value wealth, comfort, and material acquisitions more than the priceless assets of nature. When a storm causes the loss of electricity and destruction in the big rented house, the children decide to leave and head for one of the family’s mansions. Soon, we realize that young Jack is reading a children’s Bible that someone gave him and comparing the great flood they are experiencing to Noah’s. He wants to save the animals the way Noah did, and he sees many of the subsequent events as parallels to the Bible stories that he reads.
Since large portions of the Northeast are devastated by this storm, the children are forced to stop at an uphill farm conducive to cell phone coverage. Their experiences at the farm are ancient and biblical as well as modern and prophetic. There are many lessons and messages about not ignoring history and science as the children struggle to survive and navigate the world after the flood. For me, one of the most touching passages is when Jack decides, with no context for the Bible stories he reads, that the Bible is a mystery and God is a code name for nature. He says that if God stands for nature, then Jesus has to stand for science since science comes from nature. He prepares a chart that proves that Jesus and science are equal. The chart includes Jesus’s ability to heal the sick, make blind people see, and turn hardly any food into lots. All of these things can be accomplished with science; this, of course, is a major theme of the book.
