Product Description

This is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1532 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 626 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's four daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?

In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and on the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member's fortunes across a span of more than 30 years.

The Poisonwood Bible is arguably Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and it reveals both her great strengths and her weaknesses. As Nathan Price's wife and four daughters tell their story in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenaged Rachel's tendency towards precious malapropisms is particularly annoying (students practice their "French congregations"; Nathan's refusal to take his family home is a "tapestry of justice"). More problematic is Kingsolver's tendency to wear her politics on her sleeve; this is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, in which she uses her characters as mouthpieces to explicate the complicated and tragic history of the Belgian Congo.

Despite these weaknesses, Kingsolver's fully realised, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the first half when Nathan Price is still at the centre of the action. And in her treatment of Africa and the Africans she is at her best, exhibiting the acute perception, moral engagement and lyrical prose that has made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber, Amazon.com

Review
The end of colonial rule in Africa is shown in microcosm through the tragicomic collapse of a Baptist missionary family. The mother and all four daughters take turns narrating and their distinctive voices are full of life. (The eldest daughter, a kind of Malaprop Barbie, is a hoot.) Arriving full of certainties in the Belgian Congo in 1959, they're in for a series of rude shocks. Father is a hellfire patriarch come to chastise the heathen natives; other members of the family, though cowed, are questioning and observant. The swell of events soon reaches their jungle outpost; and as the country evicts its exploitive Belgian rulers, the women in the family turn away from Father. The novel is unbalanced, not least in structure, with a lengthy what-bappened-next driven not by plot demands but by the author's need to get across all she has to say about power, politics and hypocrisy on the international as well as the domestic scale. We forgive her because she is right, and because we couldn't bear to leave these characters. A big, ambitious, funny and moving book. Shortlisted for the 1999 Orange Prize. (Kirkus UK)

The first novel in five years from the ever-popular Kingsolver (Pigs in Heaven, 1993, etc.) is a large-scale saga of an American family's enlightening and disillusioning African adventure. It begins with a stunningly written backward look: Orleanna Price's embittered memory of the uncompromising zeal that impelled her husband, Baptist missionary Nathan Price, to take her and their four daughters to the (then) Belgian Congo in 1959, and remain there despite dangerous evidence of the country's instability under Patrice Lumumba's ill-starred independence movement, Belgian and American interference and condescension, and Joseph Mobutu's murderous military dictatorship. The bulk of the story, which is set in the superbly realized native village of Kilanga, is narrated in turn by the four Price girls: Leah, the "smart" twin, whose worshipful respect for her father will undergo a rigorous trial by fire; her "retarded" counterpart Adah, disabled and mute (though in the depths of her mind articulate and playfully intelligent); eldest sister Rachel, a self-important whiner given to hilarious malapropisms ("feminine tuition"; "I prefer to remain anomalous"); and youngest sister Ruth May, whose childish fantasies of union with the surrounding, smothering landscape are cruelly fulfilled. Kingsolver skillfully orchestrates her characters' varied responses to Africa into a consistently absorbing narrative that reaches climax after climax - and that, even after you're sure it must be nearing its end, continues for a wrenching hundred pages or more, spelling out in unforgettable dramatic and lyric terms the fates of the surviving Prices. Little recent fiction has so successfully fused the personal with the political. Better even than Robert Stone in his otherwise brilliant Damascus Gate, Kingsolver convinces us that her characters are, first and foremost, breathing, fallible human beings and only secondarily conduits for her book's vigorously expressed and argued social and political ideas. A triumph. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Barbara Kingsolver is the author of many novels including The Poisonwood Bible, Pigs in Heaven, and Homeland, all published by Faber. She lives with her husband and daughter in southern Arizona and in the mountains of southern Appalachia.

Customer Reviews

Exploration of colonialism
A moving and well crafted novel, focussing on a family of American missionaries in Africa. It is narrated by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a Baptist preacher determined to convert the 'heathen' natives of a remote Congolese village. The Prices arrive in the Congo whilst it is still under colonial occupation, and stay throughout its independence and subsequent turmoil.

After a rather slow beginning, the narrators develop their distinctive voices and the story becomes more engrossing. There are plenty of humourous moments, as well as some tragic and moving events. At its heart, the novel is an ambitious exploration of colonialism and its effects.

Although admirable in its scope and an enjoyable enough read, the book lacked the emotional punch I expected given its reputation and theme. The structure was also rather flawed in my opinion, with the climax coming halfway through and the end then seeming overlong.

However, it is a well written novel and is certainly worth reading by anyone with an interest in Africa.

Absorbing a modern day classic
This book is truly a wonderful, gripping, beautifully written and absorbing book giving an insight into the life of a family which has been turned upside down due to the selfishness of the father. This is a book that everyone should read.

fantastic
getting into the book can take awhile but once your in you cant stop, read the whole book in 10 days