By the time "Lord of the Flies" became a cultural phenomenon, Golding had published three more novels, all well received despite some carping from the upper-crust intellectual establishment.

A biography of the novelist William Golding, whose “Lord of the Flies” became a bible of tortured adolescence in America, has some lighter notes.

In the beginning, the kids are alright. The adults, though, are already sliding toward Sodom and Gomorrah. That’s the starting point of Lydia Millet’s novel “A Children’s Bible,” which ...