The Poisonwood Bible

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

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Brilliant - Colonialism & Humanity laid bare - Rated
Came across this book through another bood I'd read re the Congo and decided to give it a go. It was unputdownable. A story told through the eys of the 4 girls and their mother about their father's zealous Baptist mission to save the people of the Congo. The book encapsulates everything which is wrong with organised religion and significantly the flaws in colonial and post-colonial foreign policy. The fact that it achieves all of this without providing a moral lecture makes it all the more brilliant.

The story traces the pre-independence days and the post independence days and the battle for the "modern" white missionaries to survive in the primitive Congo a place which asks them to convert when what they have been sent there to do is to convert the Congo.

Your emotions for the protagonists vary from warmth and empathy to despising their very actions. It's a story that has no Hollywood ending in which good triumphs over evil because in the Congo there are varying degrees of good and varying degrees of evil and what is good now may be evil at another time.

Lovely! - Rated
This is one of those books that i've had on my shelf for an age and everytime I attempt to read it I just can't get into it. Luckily I tried again recently and I am so thankful that I did.
What a lovely book. Please read this!
The only judgement is that it really could have ended 3/4 of the way through, it seemed that it was merging into another book altogether towards the end. But nontheless I rate this very highly and it's definitely a book, and there are not many, that I will read several times throughout my life.

Original, intelligent page-turner - Rated
A novel which is based around the Belgian Congo and its fight for independence could lapse into dryness and politics. At times, especially in the second half, this book does. However, family dynamics among the four daughters of bigoted missionary Nathan Price and his increasingly rebellious wife are what keeps the pages turning. Horror and humour are nicely balanced. From early on we learn that one of the daughters will not survive the dangers of the jungle. Which one it will be; and the story of how the other members of the family survive into the future, is intriguing enough for this very long book to be read in a very short time.

They say that every home should have a bible... - Rated
... and in my opinion it should be this one. The characterisation, the concepts, the beautiful structure of the book make it one (of, now, three) that I would have to take if stranded on a desert island.

The heart of darkness - Rated
I would love to give this book 6 stars, it s that good.

A tale of an American family, a Southern Baptist Preacher, his wife and four daughters, uprooted from Gerogia to the dark heart of Congo (Zaire). Like the seeds they bring from America they struggle to thrive in the African conditions.

The tale is told by the five women: Orleanna, the long suffering wife, who has to perform miracles just to put food on the table. Rachel, the vain eldest daughter, whose dearest possession is her mirror. Leah, the tomboy, who tries desperately to be her father s favourite. Ada, the crooked one, Leah's twin, possessed with an astute intelligence but a deformed body, due to her sister stealing her noursihment from within the womb. And finally the youngest, Ruth May, who is the first to integrate in any way with the African villagers by playing a child's game "Mother May I?" with the local village children.

Throught their stories we learn of how the Congo is and how it came to be. Belgians and Americans complicit in raping her of her treasures.

The Congo is almost the very antithesis of America. Nathan , the father was driven there by his own personal demons trying to assuage the guilt he felt from the war in the Phillippine jungle.

This is a book you won t want to finish.