The Poisonwood Bible tells the story of an American family in the Congo during a time of tremendous political and social upheaval. The story is 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 all 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. This tale of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction, over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa, is set against one of history's most dramatic political parables.
The Poisonwood Bible dances between the darkly comic human failings and inspiring poetic justices of our times. In a compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption, Barbara Kingsolver has written a novel of overwhelming power and passion.
Download The Poisonwood Bible Reading Guide
I am a third of the way through this book and I love it. Having hated The Lacuna I thought I would not enjoy it, au contraire. I can engage with the characters and the fact that the girls and wife are the main narraters thus far. I have even laughed out loud in some places. This is fast becoming a book I may be sorry to finish.
ReplyDeleteOooh, glad to hear you love it! It's on my 'to read' pile, after the new Sherlock Holmes novel (The House of Silk, which is excellent by the way!) I didn't get on well with The Lacuna so was a bit dubious, but really looking forward to reading it now.
DeleteIt was thanks to Faber generously offering this fledgling online book group The Lacuna as its first read shortly after it won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction that I ‘discovered’ in Barbara Kingsolver my favourite contemporary author. The Poisonwood Bible was the second of her books I read. Written a decade earlier I first of all noticed how her style had changed over this period. I enjoyed the opportunity to compare and contrast the very distinct shift in her writing. The later novel is mellower in tone, more lyrical, poetic even, and emotionally less raw. That is to say, by the time she came to pen The Lacuna the author was handling the conveyance of emotion more subtly which, instead of reducing its impact on the reader, makes it even more intense.
ReplyDeleteFor me The Poisonwood Bible is a challenging and rather disturbing tale. What happens when one man’s controlling obsessive personality wrecks not only his own life, but also has serious consequences for his family may be fiction in this instance, but its gist will be frighteningly familiar to many. The story is character-led, a tool which Kingsolver skilfully employs to move the plot forward as well as providing real human depth as each character relates the situation from her own personal angle in alternating chapters. Nathan Price is the only character the author doesn’t give a voice to, a ploy which serves to emphasise the fact that Nathan is both the villain and victim of the story.
The female characters, Oleander and her four daughters, are all remarkably well-drawn with Kingsolver paying great sensitivity to their plight of being forced to put up with the increasingly absurd ideas of their tyrannical husband and father. It surprised me, therefore, to realise partway through the novel that apart from describing his actions and behaviour towards his family and his congregation in that small African community Kingsolver fails to delve deeper into the mind of Nathan Price. In showing the way he spirals towards his unfortunate end she only deals with the effects of what is clearly a disturbed mind. She doesn’t, however, explore the reasons for it, the seed of which would have been planted long before.
The last third of the book in which the three remaining daughters (Ruth, the youngest, having died from a snake bite years earlier) are grown up and are now following their own lives seems, to me, more like a sequel than part of the same novel. Although I think it's a nice touch to show what becomes of the women and how their experiences in Africa influence their later lives its writing feels less 'charged' somehow, as though the author took a lengthy break from the novel, maybe to work on something else, and returned to it when she was no longer quite so close to its subject and its characters. I'd be interested to know whether other readers share this sense.
Thank you, Faber and Orkney Library and Archive for inspiring me to revisit this very ‘human’ and thought-provoking novel, elements of which lingered on in my mind long after I read the final page.
i'm also coming back to this book for a second read; first time was with louise's 'real' library book group; i was spellbound then, and hope its not going to be a let down now...; whatever, with the shelf-loads of new books implacably pouring forth, i remain a great admirer of anyone who can create, and bring to lfe, a setting and its players, and their actions as well as their thoughts (but not too many thoughts) to life for lazy readers like me...
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this book. I like that each chapter is written from a different character's viewpoint. The fact that it is written in the first person allowed me to feel more intimately connected with each of the women. I thought Kingsolver was very successful in her portrayal of attitudes of the Price family to the natives, and vice versa. Sometimes they were so naive and condescending I wanted to shake them!
ReplyDeleteCarola - interesting point you make about the final third to the book. Unlike you though, I thought the reason that the writing was less 'charged' was because the women were older (less teenage angst) and time had moved on from the difficult times of Ruth May's death and their leaving the village.
I plan to read this again as I am very plot driven when reading a story, and tend to skim more descriptive passages. I'm sure I'll find lots new in it second time around!
Thoroughly recommend this haunting and gripping tale.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOverall I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and would definitely recommend it to others. The story is written from more than one perspective (mother and her daughters) and I feel this gives it a good depth and a very 'three dimensional feel'. As a result I enjoyed learning about the family (as a whole and individually, where I particularly enjoyed the contributions from the two very different twins). They all did seem undeniably naive about their situation however, probably in part due to it being such a 'foreign' relatively unknown culture, but also the blindness of their father to fully appreciate just what he was pushing his family into. Indeed he seemed certain that he had an 'answer' for these unknown people, yet had taken not time (before or during) to understand what sort of people they were and how to reach them in a way that would answer their own questions. We don't hear anything directly from him, though the author seems to suggest events in his past have a part to play in his behaviour.
ReplyDeleteDespite their situation and the things that happened to them, I do think the females did (had to ?) find their own way of coping both during and after the events, though it is clear to see that they all reached what seemed like beyond breaking point more than once.
Finally, like with The Lacuna, I thought the author 'set the scene' very well, with lots of interesting detail about customs and traditions, language, way of life etc, in a way that helped explain the story as it unfolded and without feeling 'bogged-down' with lots of extra facts!
All in all a good read and lots to reflect upon after finishing!
(Apologies for deleted comment above this one, was only half of the review, this is the full one).
I too have been reading this book for the second time and enjoyed it more than first time round. Agree that it would have been interesting to have the father's view but telling the story through each of the very different women's views worked well. It's a book to remember and to keep and read again certainly.
Delete2nd time round is proving even better; great cast, even if they all are so (delightfully) over the top!; lots of underlying serious matters, and a good healthy airing of the damaging motives and actions of missionaries marching as to war with their gods at their sides ( i bumped into a missionary on papa stour once and it gave me quite a fright);
ReplyDeleteout of waugh's 'black mischief' stable?;
and i too like the format of single voiced chapters - v cleverly done here;
but i dont like big fat 500pp and counting paperbacks - almost impossible to relax while reading, while the whole damned clumsy thing repeatedly flops and flips its pages before thumping slowly to the floor for the umpteenth time -at least these our faber online group ones are blessedly free of those yucky library plastic covers which can so aggravate the situation; as these are freebies, are we allowed to take a stanley knife to them and split them neatly into 2 more manageable sub-volumes?
This is my second time around for this book too! And it's just as good this time. I'd read it years ago and it was the fact that The Lacuna was by the same author that attracted me to the Faber reading group.
ReplyDeleteI love the way the author manages to convey the characters of the girls in the way she writes. The style of each chapter indicates the narrator so well. I'm particularly fond of Adah, but I often laugh out loud at Rachel's misuse of words.
I'm picking up things that I missed first time around, too. I even felt a bit of empathy with Our Father during the first few chapters - but now I just want to give him a good kick up the backside!
Fortunately I can't remember all the details of how the story progresses and ends, so it's still holding me enthralled. Now about halfway through...
The Poisonwood Bible
ReplyDeleteA Californian missionary,his wife and four daughters arrive ,uninvited, in the Congolese jungle.The village is not yet drawn into the internal political upheavals of 1960's post Belgian rule. Each member of the family differs in his/her growing understanding of and involvement with the village people and their culture. Leah, assisted by the schoolteacher,is eventually most open to the village way of life. Her relationship leads to a love which survives and deepens over much danger and hardship. It is she who becomes American- Congolese. Two of her sisters and mother, to varying degrees, are locked in their own mind-sets remaining outsiders to the culture, although mother does respond to the great heartbeat and spirit of Africa. The youngest child ,physically vulnerable ,as are the village youngsters, is a sacrifice to the father's colossal ignorance. Doomed to fail, completely trapped in his own messianic message, the father is eventually overtaken by his madness. He is oblivious to the strengths, goodness, wisdom and compassion of the people. He learns nothing from them.
The plunder and abuse of yet another African country by a greedy first world nation,causes warfare, deprivation, exploitation by their own leaders and the loss of a way of life.
Barbara Kingsolver handles her subject cleverly and well. A powerfully good read.
Also reading this brilliant book for a second time - and enjoying it immensely once again. Maybe slowing down to think about it more this time around, and appreciating the social/historical background more. The first time I read it I was desperate to find out what happened to each of the characters; this time I was more aware of the immense cultural misunderstandings and of the poverty and war caused by the exploitation of Africa.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Nathan Price needs to be given more space. We never see him directly, but I think this is effective. It's the story of his effect on other people, not his story.
Interesting that Leah called her fourth child Nataniel...
This was my second reading as well - the first time probably fairly soon after it was published. Having got used to reading kindle books, like AL, I found the thick heavy paperback format a bit difficult, but it was definitely a book I wanted to keep reading.
ReplyDeleteI found the slightly different language of each of the females interesting, though at times it grated a little that the voices of the daughters were coming across as much older or more mature than they should have been. It did reinforce the different perspectives each had on their very unusual situation. I think the later chapters developed this, and showed both the different ways of coping of the women, as well as the similarities arising from their shared experience and how they dealt with an incredibly difficult situation.
I toyed with the idea of passing on this book, but I think I am going to keep it - it will be well worth another read in another few years.
small complaint to carola: i like to pop in and out of this site as i read- wish you hadn't reminded me that it was ruth who died....; but your comments are always useful so all is forgiven!
ReplyDeleteI finished reading a few days ago and - I'm pleased to say - found the book every bit as good as it was the first time I read it. Like Alison, I think I paid more attention to the social and cultural aspects this time; maybe the fact that I'm now older and more aware of the impact of war, poverty, exploitation and inequality has given me a deeper understanding and appreciation of the women and their responses to the situations they find themselves in. I found Rachel the least attractive character but, in a way, I feel sorry for her. She's so shallow and self-obsessed - the antithesis of her sisters; but that compounds her sense of alienation from them. Leah and Adah each in their own way seem to find a sense of purpose and fulfilment, while I get the impression that Rachel will never be completely satisfied.
ReplyDeleteA terrific book and I'd certainly recommend it.
The only problem is that I've finished it and now feel an obligation to give Red Plenty another go...