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.