Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding! Her best work yet.
Review: Kingsolver has topped herself with this one. I have never been so moved by a novel. The book is not only outstanding because of what she says, but how she says it. With brilliant writing and remarkable facts, Kingsolver's book is a joy for anyone to read. I only warn people to read it when they are sure they have the time. Once you pick it up, you will not be able to set it down until its completion.
Rating: 
Summary: This book was the most well written book I have ever read.
Review: The Poisonwood Bible is a wonderfully written account of four sisters and their mother who have been taken to the Congo at the whim of their hypocritically religious, missionary father. I found the book extremely easy to read, and even easier to enjoy. I really enjoyed the books diversity...using each girl's/woman's perspective to narrate different situations. I particularly enjoyed how the characters evolved into completely different people as their experience in the Congo affected them. They became what they never expected. This was not the best book I have ever read, but it was close. I found myself enjoying the authors choice of words, as well as her symbolism. I definitely forgot myself, and became an observer of the family as it struggled in the foreign environment of the Congo.
Rating: 
Summary: 1st 2/3rds great, factual errors + political agenda detract
Review: I lived in eastern Congo as a missionary, not far from Kisangani, off and on over 10 years. The Poisonwood Gospel can be divided into three sections. The first, involving the initial adaptation to the culture was hilarious and typical, not just of missionary experience, but anyone's experience of radical cultural adjustment. The second involves an excruciating buildup of tension to a surprise denouement, a real page turner. The book should have ended there. Unfortunately, the third part is a political tract. It is interesting in detail and gave me some new understanding from a point of view I was not accustomed to. Unfortunately, it was a bore. Factual problems. The Congo village described seems to be a composite African village. It seems to exist simultaneously in the savanna and the forest! Since I assume that Kingfisher is promising a forest ecosystem around the village, here are the savanna intrusions that I found: Lions do not exist in the forest. Kingfisher should have used leopards, which are far more dangerous to and feared by humans. Poinsettias do not exist in the forest. They are abundant, but exotic, to eastern Africa cities like Nairobi. There are trees with red tip leaves in the forest that remind me of poinsettias, but they hardly make any show of color that would be remarkable. African sleeping sickness does not exist in the forest. Most offensive to Congo people today: they do not stink. In fact, they wash frequently when not out in their fields. I, with my Nairobi-purchased polyester-mix fabrics, stunk more than they did with their second hand local market-purchased cotton clothing! Again, I would guess that Kingfisher was relating her experience with people in a big African city like Nairobi where people buy their polyester clothes new. Dust is more typical of savanna than of forest areas. So are wet and dry seasons. Where I lived, we had two seasons: wet and wetter. Finally, the driver ant invasion strikes me as a tall tale. Driver ants can invade a house or two, but a whole village? Nah! For a better book about Congo in the early 1960s, try Naipaul's Bend in the River
Rating: 
Summary: Vivid and colorful, but way to slow
Review: I must be the exception rather than the rule but I didn't enjoy this novel. I highly anticipated the arrival of Kingsolver's newest book. Although vivid in description of the Congo and its lush surroundings, I found it difficult to like the characters.The story seemed to jump to much and at times and tended to get way to "wordy". The book was purchased in October and I just finished it tonight.(this is very rare for me to take this long) I found myself hoping the story would pick up and for me it just never did. To sum it up.....250 pages would have been sufficient to tell the same story. "It just wasn't Bean Trees".
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read this year.
Review: I loved the way Kingsolver narrated this story throught the eyes of these four women, each with a unique perspective. I feel so enlightend by her descriptions of the Congo and the people who inhabit it, that I hope to travel there one day. The coming of age of these young, Southern girls under the conditions in which they live is worth reading even if you may disagree with her political points of view. I loved it!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing compared to her fantastic other books
Review: The Bean Trees and the Animal Dreams just consume the reader, the Poisonwood Bible just confuses the reader. In all her other book I cared about the main characters, but she has not managed to carry that wonderful writing to this book. With the poisonwood bible, I am finishing the book solely because I started it.
Rating:
Summary: This is one of my all-time favorites.
Review: Ok, so Animal Dreams is also on that list. I'm so impressed that Kingsolver took such great risks with this novel and succeeded. I waited for a long time for this, like many other readers. She has me mesmerized by Africa now. I'd be interested in other recent books on the Congo or related topics, should anyone care to recommend...
Rating:
Summary: An ambitious book which boggs down into preaching politics.
Review: I think that Barbara Kingsolver must sit down and decide whether she is writing a novel or a political tract. It is not that I disagree in a fundamental way with her political beliefs. My problem is that she has them on her sleeve, or at least her character's sleeve, to such an extent that character development is truncated. Most of my friends do not agree with my politics. If either they or I were defined by our set of political beliefs, I would have no friends, and I have a good many close ones. Barbara Kingsolver is a gifted writer who starts with a good idea and creates believable characters and plots, but all too often gets bogged down in preaching at the reader through her characters. Certainly, Animal Dreams suffered from this and The Poisonwood Bible is all but sunk by it. Telling a story through five different childhood voices is a monumental task--perhaps really impossible--and I congratulate the author for trying at all.
Rating:
Summary: a grander scale for everything Kingsolver
Review: Like most other readers/reviewers, I'm a big fan of Barbara Kingsolver's work and eagerly anticipated this book. Unlike those who did not like it compared to her other books, I valued most of the differences. This is her "big one" (as I heard Kingsolver call it in an interview) and it shows. We learn about more characters, we get a longer story, we get more involved with the political situation and see more political change. We learn more about how biological, social and political systems are intertwined. We get more and every page is an education. Her other books are all of these things, but shorter and less ambitious. Like the other books I couldn't put it down once I started reading it because of the story and characters, yes, but also because of what I learn. My only problem, because Kingsolver showed more of her political views, was the imbalance presented. I'm admittedly a novice in Congolese politics, and a sympathizer with the people's attempts toward independence. I just felt that I was reading a one-sided account and would have appreciated a little more balance to start my education. A terrific work. Thank you Barbara. As always, you're an inspiration and a teacher.
Rating:
Summary: Wow! What a great read.
Review: I've been reading Ms. Kingsolver for years now but this book convinces me that she's writing on a whole new level. I loved the narrative structure: chapters written in first person from the point of view of a different daughter. Each daughter is well drawn and very different from the other three. I could not put this book down and stayed up late two nights in a row to finish it. I wish they had more than 5 stars that I could give!
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