The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (P.S.)

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the poisonwood bible: a novel (p.s.)

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The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (P.S.)

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The Poisonwood Bible 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. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Amazon.com:

Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 2000: 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 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 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 fortune 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 daughters tell their stories in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenage 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 realized, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the first half, when Nathan Price is still at the center 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 have made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber

Customer Reviews:

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-28
Could not get into it.
This book had some promise. It could have been good but I did not feel part of the story. The author was just telling the reader what happened. I like to know what the characters are experiencing inside as well as out. I lost interest in the first quarter of the book. I gave more than one star because the premise was good and the characters at least potentially were interesting.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-19
Loved it!
I just finished The Poisonwood Bible, and LOVED it. Each character has a distinct voice (My favorite was Adah) and the progression from the very events that shaped them in Africa to their life outside the village to the full-circle ending made this a great summer read! I'm excited to read other Kingsolver novels!

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-09
Boring
Only listen to Audio. Couldn't even finish one CD with this story. It didn't grab me at all in the early stages so sorry I have better things to do with my time.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-04
Couldn't stop reading it.
I really couldn't stop. My mother bought this book for me yesterday, as it's required reading for my AP English class. I read the first two hundred pages yesterday and the remaining three hundred and fifty today.

If you're reading this, you probably already know the basic plot. A family from Georgia--Nathan Price, his wife Orleanna, and their daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May set out for the Congo on a missionary trip. In the process, each of the family members is consumed, in their own way, by the continent of Africa.

But there's more to it than that. The book is narrated by the women of the family, and each of them has their own cross to bear. Orleanna feels she is trapped in a loveless, abusive marriage. Rachel simply misses the comforts of home. Adah is probably the most interesting and unique character. She did not get enough oxygen in the womb, and as a consequence walks with a limp and sees things backwards. You might get sick of plowing through her sections of the book, which are full of palindromes and other nonsense, but it's worth it to stick with her. Then there's Adah's twin sister, Leah. She blames herself for Adah's plight. She also adores her abusive father, and struggles to shape her own identity. Ruth May is the baby of the family, and her primary trait, according to her sisters, is "stick-to-it-ivness." Even the patriarch of the family, Nathan, has something beneath the surface.

This book is at its best in the first half, when it is describing the lives of the whole family in Africa. After they split up, it slows down--which is odd, because the first 250 pages describe a year, while the next 250 describe thirty. But the last half of the book is primarily a history lesson/anti-imperialist tract. While these are good and just themes, the point was getting across just fine in the context of a compelling story beforehand. That's the only thing that stopped me from giving the book five stars. At times, the author seemed to leave the voice of the characters behind in order to make her political points.

You'll probably cry in this book, but you'll laugh, too. Rachel tends to mix up words--like when she describes the American concept of marriage as "monotony," rather than "monogamy." So it's not all some deep, dark history lesson.

While it's definitely serious literature, I'd be more inclined to recommend The Poisonwood Bible to a woman. As I said, it's told from the point of view of women, and many of its main themes, from motherhood to romance to sisterhood, seem to be more easily appreciated by women. That said, if you're looking for a serious work and a new perspective about imperialism in Africa, I can't think of a better book for man or woman.

Rating:
Date: 2008-05-30
Surviving
This is a story of children and adults growing and making decisions, sometimes for the better but sometimes not. It's frustrating and depressing to read about their actions, which means, of course, that it's well-written. I may read it again to catch more of the symbolism. I suggest a reading group for this one!