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Content snapshot
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Violence
Very heavy
Armed men, a killing, animal death, and injuries to children as civil order collapses
Language
A lot
Teenage profanity throughout; Evie's narration is contemptuous and blunt
Sexual Content
Some
Older teenagers pair off and the parents' behaviour is openly debauched, but the writing stays at innuendo rather than description
Substance Use
Very heavy
Central
Emotional Intensity
Very heavy
Total parental abandonment, climate collapse, and children forced into adult responsibility, all narrated by a girl who has stopped expecting help
What this book is about
A dozen families share a lakeside mansion for the summer; when a catastrophic storm arrives, Kirkus notes, the parents become "incapacitated through self-medication" — taking Ecstasy as the roof comes off — and the children leave to fend for themselves at a nearby farm, whose "brief peace is disrupted in often horrific fashion." Evie narrates with escalating fury at adult incompetence while her small brother Jack reads a children's Bible as a survival manual. Kirkus calls it "a bleak and righteously angry tale" and reaches for Lord of the Flies. National Book Award finalist in 2020, short and savage.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Parents incapacitated by drugs and alcohol during a disaster
Violence against and among children as order collapses
Climate catastrophe and total parental abandonment
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