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The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (P.S.) | 
 enlarge | Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  1423 reviews
Sales Rank: 2132
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0060786507
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060786502
ASIN: 0060786507
Publication Date: May 31, 2005
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Amazon.com Review
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
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1418 more reviews...
Lost in Africa January 2, 2009
I did a little reading about Kingsolver and I found out that her parents were missionaries, which provides an interesting angle to this all ready interesting novel. The novel is set in Africa in the 1960's. A baptist minister, Nathan Price, brings his wife and 4 daughters to Africa to convert the locals into Christians.
The story is told through the women. At first, with so many narrators, I was a bit confused as to who was who, but after awhile each daughter's voice emerges and it became easier to tell who was telling the story. The mother's voice is heart-wrenching as she looks back at their life in Africa.
There are many layers to this book: sexism and racism being the biggest. But there is also the question of moral authority: who dictates it? Who is right? And who has the right to force it upon others? The women, regardless of culture, are not seeing as influencers of society, but rather as people living through it - getting the laundry done, taking care of the children and not interested in the bigger picture that men play (Leah, the middle daughter, being the exception). There are a lot of questions about society that the book brings up and would be excellent for a book club discussion.
Overall, I loved The Poisonwood Bible. It is definitely a heavy read and the tone throughout the novel is one of sadness. If you are looking for a lighthearted read - this isn't it. If you are interested in something a deeper - read this.
 Great story, incredible writing style December 30, 2008
I read this book in high school. Not the kind of book most high school guys would enjoy. But I loved it. The story is certainly interesting, but I was more enamored with the writing style than anything else. Each chapter is told from the first-person perspective of a different member of the family. The chapters told my the mentally retarded daughter are the most fascinating. It is so interesting to see how each different character interprets events differently. A must-read for any fan of literature.
My Introduction to Writing December 9, 2008
This is a book folks have probably already described as one of those you'll compare all that you've read before and since. I will describe it as my introduction to literature, to writing. Perhaps I'm late to the party, what's new? The book was an Oprah book, so lots of us have already been all over this juan, and writefully so.
This story is told first person by 5 persons. I would say girls or women, but can't because it's not that simple, better than that and it wouldn't be fair. A mom and four daughters. Each and every one of them tell this story in turn. These ladies go to Africa with their baptist minister dad, Nathan Price. I want to tell you about these Prize girls and their mom. I'll let them tell you about brother Nathan Price and the other parts. This wheel has already been invented and perfected.
I was thinking earlier today that stories must dream of being told by Kingsolver, like (may god forgive me) an egg wants to be an Egg McMuffin in a corny McDonalds kind of way. To be told by Kingsolver is to be told well. She goes in and doesn't come back out until there are no story prisoners left behind. Like a net dropped into the ocean and brought up and released on deck. The details are there jumping all over the place in plain sight now, as exciting as all get out. Everyone of them will be touched and moved to their rightful place. Every marvelous one of them. I had no idea there was that much just under the surface.
Barbara does 5 entire souls in about 543 paperback pages. Before I finished I knew I was going to go again, and I did. I'm like what am I gonna read now?
From Rachel, the oldest daughter: If anyone presumed I was too young for a conversation about adulters and not getting babies they had another think coming.
From Leah, one of the twins: It struck me what a wide world of difference there was between our sort of games -- "Mother May I?", "Hide and Seek" -- and his: "Find Food", "Recognize Poinsonwood", "Build a House". And here he was a boy no older than eight or nine. He had a younger sister who carried the family's baby everywhere she went and hacked weeds with her mother in the manioc field. I could see that the whole idea and business of childhood was nothing guaranteed. It seemed to me, in fact, like something more or less invented by white people and stuck onto the front end of grown-up life like a frill on a dress.
From Orlenna, mom: I was just one more of those women who clamp their mouths shut and wave the flag as their nation rolls off to conquer another in war. Guilty or innocent, they have everything to lose. They are what there is to lose. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.
From Adah, the other twin, my favorite: And all of us with our closed eyes smelled the frangipani blossoms in the big rectangles of open wall, flowers so sweet they conjure up sin or heaven, depending on which way you are headed.
From Rachel, describing her twin sisters: They spent so much time staring at each other's faces before they were born they can go the rest of their lives passing up mirrors without a glance.
From Leah describing Mama Tataba, their house-mom. She had a blind eye. It looked like an egg whose yolk had been broken and stirred just once. As she stood there by our garden, I stared at her bad eye, while her good eye stared at my father.
From Adah: Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations. ... It is true I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.
And one more from mom: I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow. It's easy to point at other men, conveniently dead, starting with the ones who first scooped up mud from riverbanks to catch the scent of a source. Why, Dr. Livingstone, I presume, wasn't he the rascal! He and all the profiteers who've since walked out on Africa as a husband quits a wife, leaving her with her naked body curled around the emptied-out mine of her womb. ...
This is a book I'll always have a copy of to lend, if I'm lucky to have copies of any. There is just so much in this book, so much to love about these women and Africa. The excerpts above are just that, excerpts. None of us can be rightfully described by an excerpt. No way. But a glimpse. The bar has been raised by Kingsolver.
"Gripping story of growing up and finding meaning in life" December 5, 2008
A masterpiece of literary craft and social conscience. A well-researched and biting critique of American imperialism in Africa in the 1950s and '60s, and a matching parable of religion at its worst (and best, thanks to Brother Fowles), all rolled into a gripping story of growing up and finding meaning in life. The multiple first-person structure (wonderfully easy to follow) is pure writer's genius. (I fell in love with Adah!)
 Promising, but Nothing November 29, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book might not have been bad. The idea of a missionary family (from the Jim Crow South, no less)moving to Africa had its merits. The idea of narrating from five different perspectives was original and might have been pulled off. Adah was a fairly interesting, if unrealistic and unsympathetic, character. Most of the prose was beautiful. But somehow, this just didn't work out. First of all, none of the characters were believable. The father was too heartless, the mother was too spineless, the daughters were too different and too stereotypical. The thirty pages of epilogue became tiresome, too. The author just didn't seem to know when to quit. The worst part, though, was the tone of the book, something I noticed even at the age of eleven. The author continually bashes America, white people/Europeans, Christianity, and democracy. She continually extols Communism and indigenous Africans. I'll freely admit that some criticisms of the former and some praises of the latter are accurate, and, especially given the setting of the book, natural and appropriate. But hundreds of pages of Big Bad America v Inherently Good and Noble Africa is ridiculous. The author also seems to expect the reader to connect to Leah, who goes from being a dutiful Christian daughter to becoming an atheist and a Communist and marrying an African, hoping that one day her whiteness will be erased. Leah is annoying and the worst of the preachers, and, considering that she's supposed to be so intelligent, she accomplishes nothing with her life and displays no concern for her family or sensitivity for anyone else. Any of the other characters, even the supposedly dim-witted Rachel, would have made a better "good guy." Plus, the author isn't accurate in her portrayal of Baptists. I guess if I was going to write a book to make a religion look bad, I would at least do some research first so I could attack it properly.
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