Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124398 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 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

Synopsis
The family of a fierce evangelical Baptist missionary--Nathan Price, his wife, and his four daughters--begins to unravel after they embark on a 1959 mission to the Belgian Congo, where they find their lives transformed over the course of three decades.

Customer Reviews

Absorbing, beautifully written and truly superb.
Until I read this book, I had thought I would never find a book I loved as much as Memoirs of a Geisha. I was wrong.

I finished The Poisonwood Bible about two weeks ago and am still having what can only be described as withdrawal symptoms now. I wanted to re-read this book the moment I finished it. Throughout the book, as the remaining pages dwindled, I began to dread the end, and made a conscious effort to slow down and savour the words on every page. It was a truly absorbing and beautiful journey through an incredibly well written and researched book - a completely plausible story of a family's experiences in the Belgian Congo in a highly political era.

The wife and 4 daughters of a devout evangelist follow Nathan Price in his mission to the Congo to educate the 'Tribes of Ham' in the teachings of Jesus, unaware of what they are to learn from a starkly different way of life than that lived in Georgia, USA. Wholly unprepared for the consequences of a white family's presence in a country which is being politically abused by the American Government, they all have lessons to learn quickly. Add this to the unrelenting and almost inhospitable environment of the country itself and the reader senses from early on that there is a recipe for disaster brewing. Indeed, the reader pre-empts and fears that moment's ultimate arrival, having developed an extraordinary empathy for the characters along the way.

The author writes beautifully, holding the reader's interest by providing a rich tapestry of historical and political education and an examination of family life in difficult times. The book combines humour and sadness with diplomacy and skill leaving nothing to dislike or criticise. The author herself states that she waited forty years for the knowledge and wisdom to write the book. Trust me, it was worth the wait. Read this and weep.

Intensely moving, insightful, educational
I came to this book with a fair amount of prejudice. Having just read Achebe's Things Fall Apart (an African perspective on colonialism), how could an American have anything to add. Yet Kinsgsolver, through the ingenious device of five different narrative voices (the mother and four daughters), manages to bring several completely different perspectives to the many topics coverd by the book. I found the book gripping, and as the sage evolves, intensely involving and it was a delight to find a book which I genuinely found hard to put down and then counted the hours untill I could pick it up again. This author is "mature" in the best sense of the word, bringing to her work an authority and insight which to me has elevated the work to the maybe cliched category of "twentieth century classic". I am pleased it was recommended to me and that I bought it and read it. Excellent

Powerful, passionate and poetic
The Poisonwood Bible is a wonderful book which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone and everyone. I picked it up at a jumble sale and took it on holiday with me, hoping to be entertained for a couple of days, but instead found myself completely entwined with the story. Kingsolver’s ambitious narrative follows a Baptist minister, his wife and four daughters on their mission to the Congo in the late 1950s, as the region takes its first steps towards independence. The life of each family member is utterly changed by the experiences in the Congo, and even after the sudden and shocking ending of the mission the Congo remains the heart of darkness and of light in each life.

Orleanna Price, the mother, narrates the first chapter in each section, and each following chapter is narrated by a different daughter. This device allows the reader to become quickly and intimately acquainted with the family, but the father, Nathan, remains a distant and ominous figure, reported differently by each narrative. Rachel, the eldest, longs to return to her friends and home, Leah and Adah, the unidentical twins, become fascinated and at home in the Congo, and Ruth May, the baby, tries to understand what she sees around her, accepting her surroundings without surprise. Adah in particular offers fascinating, comic and razor-sharp portraits of those around her. Kingsolver creates an instantly recognizable voice for each speaker. The book encompasses with powerful themes such as freedom, redemption, free will, love vs. survival and many more. The girls have all been brought up on Nathan’s fire and brimstone religion, which leaves no room for compromise or the lessons that are to be learnt from other cultures. In the Congo, however, each member of the family learns that there are no simple choices; as Adah says: ‘Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side…a two-faced goddess looking forward and back.’

The Poisonwood Bible is a wonderful achievement, weaving together the strands of religion, feminism, politics, morality and environmentalism in Kingsolver’s lyrical and layered prose, with a passionate and fulfilling love thrown in for good measure! I knew only the basics of America’s role in the Congo, and the book inspired me to read more about it, and it certainly opened my eyes to the less-than-spotless dealings that went on. It’s also wonderfully evocative of the surrounding environment, and the jungle is really a character in its own right. The death of one of the family comes as a shock and a tragedy, and yet the other members realize that every other family in the village has lost at least one person—why should their grief be any more important? This is the emotional climax of the book, and the numbness and disbelief that the characters feel is perfectly created and almost tangible.

The later sections of the book, however, are less successful than the parts set during Nathan’s mission. These later sections dip in and out of the characters’ lives in the ‘60s, ‘70s and the late ‘80s, and it is a little tricky to adjust as Nathan and Orleanna’s young daughters grow up to become mothers, hotel owners and scientists. Rachel, in particular, is somewhat sketchily drawn, still using the same malapropisms as when she was 16 (these ARE deliberate, and not typos, as one reviewer here suggested!) Anatole, too, is something of a cliché. It’s as if by virtue of being Congolese he must be a paragon, and it’s disappointing to see Kingsolver not create a more realistic character—is she afraid to create a flawed African? Also, the narrative seems more concerned with cramming in the true political events of these years than advancing the characters any further. By this stage, however, most readers will be so completely caught up in the novel and so connected to the characters that they will accept these flaws. And these are only minor flaws when set against the grand scale of the novel. It is beautiful, heart-breaking, wise, poetic, a damning indictment of colonialism, and a must-read for everybody.