Refined_edge's Full Review: Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible
"The Poisonwood Bible" was one of my big summer reading choices this year. I didn't have much reason, it just looked interesting. And it certainly was. It was one of those stories that I would have been happy to see go on and on, just to know how the characters ended up. Of course, a book has to end, and I was happy with where the characters left off.
I almost didn't make it there. I found the first two pages of the novel so baffling that I put the book down twice before I was finally able to get into it. And once I got past those two pages, I was set.
This is the story of a minister's family who pick up and move to the Congo as missionaries. It is told in alternating chapters by the four daughters of the Rev. Price, as they attempt to adjust to their new life in their own ways. Each "book" opens with a few pages from the mother's point of view after the fact (back in America many many years later).
What really struck me about this book was the use of different voices, and the skill with which Barbara Kingsolver created these voices. It may seem like a basic facet of novel-writing, but creating and staying faithful to a character voice throughout a novel is not easy, and I really love books that do it well ("Misery" being the prime example I can think of at the moment). The oldest daughter, Rachel, is selfish, lives in a fantasy world, and constantly misuses words and phrases. Leah is smart, and tries her best to make sense of the world. Adah is clever, and her writing is peppered with rhymes and palindromes, little turns of phrase she uses to amuse herself by poking fun at life. And the youngest, Ruth May, tells it just as she sees it, hearing everything but misunderstanding much. The only voice I had a hard time with was Orleanna's (the mother). Perhaps it was the fact that she was speaking about the experience from the other side. It just didn't work for me. She opens the book, and it was her that nearly made me give up on it. Her later chapters don't get much better.
I don't know that I can do the plot much justice. The detail of life in the Congo is rich and vivid. It is at times frightening, sad, joyful, hopeful, and all these things at once. The family lives through things that many of us could not even imagine. You can feel the pure need to survive that is present in extreme circumstances, followed by the realization that this is simply the way life was for the people of the Congo at the time.
It's well worth the time, and very easy to read once you get past that first bit.
In 1959, a missionary named Nathan Price transports his wife and four daughters to a remote village in the Belgian Congo to convert the natives. The f...More at HotBookSale
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 ...More at Buy.com
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