The children are a group of mostly young teenagers, but they are aged from nine to seventeen. They have been brought along by their parents on a reunion vacation to a mansion on a lake by the seashore, but they are mostly let alone while their parents drink, do drugs, and generally misbehave. Evie, the narrator, does her best to take care of her brother Jack, a sensitive nine-year-old.
The children, who have never met before, disdain their parents, and they have a game going in which the winner is the last child to be matched with a parent. The kids all sleep together in an attic and at first their vacation is idyllic because they can do what they want.
Things begin to go wrong, though, when a huge storm rolls in that wreaks a lot of damage and disrupts services. The story begins to move away from reality after the house is partially destroyed and the parents insist that they can’t leave because they signed a lease. The kids do leave, though. Burl, the caretaker for the property, is worried about possible disease from the mosquitos on the now unsanitary property, so he takes them to a compound that has clearly been prepared for Armageddon.
From here, the novel slides in dystopia, fantasy, and even fable as civilization begins to break down.
This novel is fast moving and well written. Although I certainly found it interesting, it ultimately evolved into something that was not quite my thing, especially the religious overtones injected when one of the parents gives Jack a book of Bible stories, which he, having no religious upbringing at all, struggles to understand.
I read this book for my James Tait Black Prize project.
whatmeread 
I suspect the religious stuff wouldn’t work for me. It’s not that I object to religion in novels, it’s just that I so rarely catch the references!
I have to admit that it didn’t take up much of the novel, but it is part of the conclusion.