The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel

What a read. An absolutely fantastic book. Truly, one of the greats. I really can't speak more highly of it. Brava, Kingsolver.

But regarding Faber & Faber, the publisher: I wouldn't call this edition their best work. The cover art looks like a poor AI job, for one. Detail is kind of amorphous. And then sometime after the 3rd chapter the cover on my copy separated from its gum along the spine. So, for the couple of weeks i spent reading this book i had this big separated sheet of cover that i had to take off each time i began reading and slip back on when the session was finished. Basically just like with hardcovers, except when the dust jacket comes off of a hardcover the book still has its hard cover to protect it, and that's obviously not true with soft covers. So, yeah. Not great. The designer had the right idea because it is pretty on the shelf, but any closer inspection betrays the poor construction.

5⭐ Story, storytelling, and writing (truly exceptional) 2½⭐ This Faber & Faber edition..

1. Plot (4 stars) - A missionary family consisting of a husband, wife, and four daughters set off to change Africa only to have Africa change them. As the months drag on, and her husband becomes more entrenched in a losing battle to change Africa into the West, the wife must take charge and decide what to do with the family--how long do they stay, how Africanized do they become, and how would they even leave if they wanted to? This struggle engrossed me. As the journey changed from vacation to maroonment, I read on, feeling the eerie shift in perspective from welcomed guests to mistrusted outsiders far from home.

2. Characters (4 stars) - Yes, we've seen the proselytizing brim and firestone preacher who charges forth completely blind to his own hypocrisy before. But thankfully the husband doesn't get much stage time. Instead Kingsolver focuses on the women, and they are wonderfully drawn. There's the tomboy, the one who goes native , the beauty queen, and the quirky nerd. And above them all, the conflicted mother. Each chapter is told from a rotating character perspective, so you see deep inside each.

3. Theme (3 stars) - I was a little disappointed with the larger theme--the follies of brining Christianity to people who don't want it, alongside the white man's rape of Africa--because I feel that both themes have been explored plenty of times before. It would have been refreshing to see a bit of the other side. Christianity has as many saints as sinners, and capitalism has as many innovators as exploiters, and we rarely see the latter in this work. That said, for the scope Kingsolver did choose to carve out, she explored it well, especially by not getting too "Dances with Wolves" with her natives and making them all into the noble savage.

4. Voice (4 stars) - Kingsolver can write. Her sentences are each crafted to capture the twang and perspective of the narrator of the moment. And she weaves each of these varied perspectives skillfully together to give the reader a clear, multi-dimensional picture of the whole.

5. Setting (5 stars) - In many ways Africa herself is a chief character in this book, and Kingsolver successfully transported me there. It's hot, it's difficult, it's dangerous, it's mysterious. It's a world where man is forced to react, instead of control. It's a world so different than my own, and yet I felt like I was there through the power of her descriptions.

6. Overall (5 stars) - I know my scores don't really add up to a 5. But this is a case where the whole is greater than the parts. The Poisonwood Bible is an epic, and when I closed it I felt filled with the experience and empty that there would be no more. Not only would I recommend it, I would read it again.

In Barbara Kingsolver's epic novel "The Poisonwood Bible", Baptist minister Nathan Price takes his wife, Orleanna, and their four daughters to the Belgian Congo in 1959 on a mission to bring the Word of God to the tiny, impoverished village of Kilanga. The family is woefully unprepared for a life vastly different from what they knew in small town Georgia, and while all of the Prices struggle to adapt, Nathan's arrogance and dogma escalate a difficult situation into an intolerable one.

Told in chapters that alternate between the viewpoints of Orleanna and the girls, we experience life in Kilanga from very different perspectives. Mrs. Price's contributions are reflections on loss, contributed from the present in her old age as she looks back at her time in the Congo, but her daughters' stories are contemporaneous. Rachel, at fifteen the oldest, can't believe the inconvenience of life among people poorer than any she has ever met before. Leah, the older of twins, is bright and driven, working diligently and passionately for approval in the eyes of her father while befriending several of the villagers. Adah, the other twin, who has been crippled since birth, is largely silent, but keenly and cynically observant. And Ruth May, at just five years old, is independent and keen to explore her new surroundings, falling easily into the rhythms of Kilanga's children.

The first half of "The Poisonwood Bible" details the Price's arrival, the challenges they face in Kilanga, the simmering tension that begins to boil between the missionaries and the villagers, and the tumultuous fallout from President Eisenhower's decision to undermine the first democratically elected government in the Congo after the country is granted independence by Belgium. All of this crescendos to a tragic event that shatters the Price family, and sends its members on vastly different paths.

The second half of the book spans the three decades that follow, exploring how the Price women reconcile their own roles in that tragedy, and how it affects the lives they end up living. Across years and across continents we watch each of them struggle and strive to find a place for themselves in the world, with both success and heartbreak, indelibly marked by their experience in the Congo.

"The Poisonwood Bible" grew from the author's experience as a child in Africa, and its characters are as unique and substantial as anyone you'll meet in real life. Propelled by beautiful, finely crafted prose, the entwined stories of the Price women and the Congo paint a three-dimensional world, populated with people the reader grows to know and to care about, despite their all-too-human failings. Both epic in sweep and deeply personal in focus, it is an outstanding novel that consistently immerses the reader more deeply as the story progresses. Strongly recommended.

This book pulled me in from the start. In the beginning, I identified with the young girls growing up with a pastor father who didn't know how to properly love and care for his family. As the story went on, I came to see myself in all of the characters, and especially the mother who finally found her voice and strength. Such rich and beautiful writing, it was easy to feel all the feelings along the way - delight, sass, intimidation, fear, shame & humiliation, anger, disappointment, love, and hope. Sincerely a book that touched me in so many ways and kept me interested all the way through.

"The Poisonwood Bible" is a special book lauded and awarded and worshipped by thousands of readers, many of whom believe it belongs in the canon of great 20th century literature. Do I personally believe it belongs there? While it's admittedly just my opinion, no. Do I believe it's a must for the bookshelf? While it's also admittedly just my opinion, yes.

I recently read it for the second time. The first time I read it, it was part of the syllabus for a post-Colonial lit class in college. In that first reading, I recall thinking it was practically flawless. I did not think so in my recent second reading, for reasons listed below.

As many, many other reviewers have noted (often as a negative or a dislike), somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way through the book, there is a sharp change in course that almost feels like a different book altogether.

In the first 1/2 to 2/3, we have the Price family, led by zealous, Mosquito Coast-like minister Dad, arriving in Africa to live as missionaries in service of and at the mercy of Dad's quest not just to Christianize, but to Protestant Christianize, the local villagers. The local villagers clearly have other ideas, and these conflicts in thinking are not helped by Reverend Dad's largely tone-deaf approach to evangelism. (Example: insisting that the only way to Christ is baptism in the nearby river, which the native parents are terrified to let their children enter, and with good reason, because of man-eating crocodiles.)

While Reverend Dad is the character around whom the other main characters orbit, we do not really get him as a personality except through his actions and through dialogue. Instead, each chapter rotates between the first-person viewpoints of either oldest daughter Rachel; second daughter Leah; Leah's twin sister Adah; youngest daughter Ruth May; or, far less frequently, Mom Orleanna.

The switching of viewpoints is effective and helps the reader view events of the story through different lenses that do much to shape the overall narrative. Kingsolver does an excellent job differentiating the voices: Rachel is vapid, self-centered, and materialistic; Leah is a precocious, wannabe Daddy's Girl; Adah, who is disabled, is sullen, withdrawn, and quite likely a genius; Ruth May is a rough-and-tumble kindergartner who perceives more than older family members realize; and Orleanna is a disillusioned wife who has lost her own identity along the way. Each of these voices is drawn to great effect, making it easy to differentiate who our narrator is in each chapter. (In particular, Rachel with her me-centric focus on appearance and her habit of confidently misusing words and phrases, and little Ruth May, whose understanding of the world around her is clearly a small child's. These two characters also add a light touch of humor on occasion.) On the flip side, however, it could almost be said that the narratives are almost too deliberately differentiated, making the characters seem over-the-top at times. And it's very obvious that the author clearly favors Leah. (Just like the oft-protested reply of mothers everywhere, "I don't have a favorite child -- I love them all the same," let's hazard a guess that all authors likewise have favorite characters. While that's understandable, I'm not sure the reader on the other end should so easily be able to discern that favoritism.)

While 2/3 of the way through the book we are still with this same group of narrators (less one, whose abrupt and tragic demise forms a crisis point), this is where the novel makes the abrupt shift in tone mentioned by so many other reviewers. From then on, the book is a thinly veiled commentary on political unrest in this part of Africa and its lingering consequences. By this time, readers may or may not realize they're being preached at, but they will no doubt know it by the end of the book. For many readers who savored and loved the first part of the book (self included), this can leave at best a sour taste in one's mouth and at worst a feeling of near-betrayal by the author.

Kingsolver's descriptions of the natural world are rarely paralleled in fiction. They are lyrical, affecting, and dripping in beautifully minute detail as her words describe the flora and fauna of this world -- a place where devastating beauty is always just right outside the back door, but so is death. These gifted and intuitive descriptions of nature are my favorite thing about reading Barbara Kingsolver, and this is a trademark of hers. My least favorite thing about reading Barbara Kingsolver is feeling that my reading pleasure is being interrupted by being force-fed an agenda, which is also a trademark of hers. Having now read three of her books, in only one have I felt that this agenda-feeding, while still present, was subtle, and it wasn't this one.

With all that being said, four stars is a high rating for me, and the book is an experience not to be missed, despite its flaws.