The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A work of art
Review: I read this book at a friend's recommendation after she saw how much I enjoyed Kingsolver's "The Bean Trees."

Nothing I write here can really do this book justice. It was enthralling. The Price family packs off to the Congo (it's set in the late 50s) for a year of mission work, let by a severe, pentecostal father. They bring Betty Crocker cake mix and unsensible clothes and have no earthly idea what their in for.

One of the things I enjoyed about the book is how it rotates viewpoints between the four Price daughters (with the occasional "Mother" chapter thrown in). Each daughter has a very different outlook; overall, this provides a very balanced story -- not too religious, not too secular. Interestingly, the story is never told from the father's point of view...

The book is quite long, but Kingsolver really weaves an amazing tale of life in Africa and how instead of bringing redemption to the "savages," the Congolese change the Prices' lives in ways you could never imagine. This is a book that sticks with you after you finish it.

I was a little surprised to see some of the bad reviews on this website: evidently some people tended to think that Kingsolver presented an unChristian or unAmerican viewpoint. Personally, I felt she was very realistic and did a remarkably poetic job of translating both the horror and the simplicity of living in the Congo during such a dark point in its history.

Definitely a five-star book!!

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful prose, book could have used some editing
Review: I loved this beautifully written book until soon after the part where the mother and daughters left the father. It should have ended then, because that was obviously the climax of the story. Instead, the book went on unnecessarily for another hundred or so pages with the characters' lives after that climactic event.

That said, I found this book to be Kingsolver's best by far. Her device of telling the story through the eyes of different characters was brilliant and made for multilayered portrayals of most of the major characters. Her prose, as I said above, is beautiful: deft, rich, and delicately wrought. Her understanding of the Congo made me feel I was there. Simply one of the best books I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I'm currentley reading "Poisonwood Bible" for my history class im only about 60 pages in and I already love it dearly. I love the way the story rotates between Nathan Price's 4 different and hilarious daughters I especially love Adah Price, Leah Price's twin. Adah is mentally retarted yet she knows and sees more than all and is indeed a hilarious character. I also love the relationship between their mother and father. She seems to be such a normal person who curses, makes mistakes and tries hard but he seems to live his life on a pedastal trying to be the most perfect person ever (far from it in my opinion) I recommend this book to everyone it's a great read.

Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: I am not drawn to books about Africa or religion, but this was recommended by a friend and turned out to be the best book I've read in years. It is so philosophical and well-woven that it effortlessly guides the reader through a number of years and changes while provoking one to consider some of life's biggest mysteries: What is God? What is His intent for mankind? What is sin? What is worth? And yet the storytelling is so spellbinding that you read every word to eek out the meaning(s).

This book changed my life.

Rating:
Summary: Life and murder in South Africa, not the Bible.
Review: This is a remarkably complex account of a missionary who spent thirty years ministering to 'the least of these' in postcolonial South Africa at the expense of his family. Coming from Bethlehem, GA., with the Southern naivete, to the jungles of what was called the Congo (now Zaire) where there were no Piggly Wiggly sores, they are hardly prepared for the political upheaval taking place.

The writer had lived in Africa as the child of medical and public-health workers. She thought of it as a place of wonders. That is typical childhood memories. She chose an evangelical Baptist preacher to interpret her 'path of exploring the great, shifting terrain between righteousness and what's right.' It took her thirty years to finish the final draft with a little help from her friends.

However, trained as a biologist, her previous books reflect her interest in the natural world. Her collection of essays explore her beliefs that life choices must be ultimately made alone.

With titles like ANIMAL DREAMS, PIGS IN HEAVEN, THE BEAN TREES, they really concern family problems, individual rights, but this one primarily is based on her influence by the Bible (King James Version).

Some of her articles on natural history have appeared in 'Smithsonian' and 'National Geographic' magazines. This ambitious epic into the 1980s was a New York Times Bestseller and one of Oprah's Book Club favorites.

Rating:
Summary: The Downfall of a Nation from the Mouths of Babes
Review:
The Poisonwood Bible is poetic, wrapping the rocky history of Belgium's withdraw from the Congo in the bodies of four young girls. When Nathan Price, a fiery Baptist preacher, moves his family to a Congan missionary in search of his own redemption, the four daughters he has raised fearing the wrath of God, begin to fear their father as much as the unfamiliarity surrounding them.

Kingsolver's brilliant novel touches on several serious issues including the theme of salvation, strong throughout the novel. Her purpose seems to open the eyes of the audience to the injustice of Congo's independence. Kingsolver crafts her novel with a strong message delivered so softly, any audience will understand. Even the Belgian government, strongly the antagonist of the novel, could read Poisonwood without offence.

This historical fiction places the imaginary lives of a missionary family lost in the accurate history of the African Congo's fight for independence. Kingsolver's creativity is unmatched in her portrayal of the serious happenings of a tormented father and an entire nation from the mouths of four little girls. Kingsolver show the effects of Congo independence on the Congo's youngest citizens, letting their experience of destruction of their family, foreign country, and lives as they know them swept away in front of their eyes.

The reader walks away from Poisonwood with a bittersweet appreciation for strong religion and its effect upon the relationship between husband and wife. The book illustrates the dangers of having more power than one person, or one nation, can handle. The effect is humbling and eye opening.

Rating:
Summary: The true african failure: parenting by the Price family
Review: The Congo is brutal and merciless. It will eat you alive-or destroy your family as it did to the Price family in The Poisonwood Bible. Nathan and Orleanna Price leave for the Belgian Congo in 1959 as Baptist missionaries-carrying their way of life on their backs. A remote village deep in the jungle became the Price family's new home, and is no place to raise a young family used to American culture.

Barbara Kingsolver wrote the novel through the voice of the four young Price girls, who are trying to please their overbearing father and quiet mother. Kingsolver masterfully differentiates the four girls' voices and after initial confusion as to who the girls were, it worked well in the end. The task of authoring a novel from four distinct perspectives is a technical undertaking that Kingsolver delivered on a silver platter. She incorporated beautiful lyrical prose through the voice of her poet child, Adah, who can't communicate orally but remains a bona fide genius her entire life.

The novel's main theme evolves from Orleanna. This docile but caring mother supported her husband through the daring decision to move to Africa-but couldn't stand up to the Mr. Darling-type familial dictator when the Belgian Congo became obviously too dangerous for the family. Orleanna needed to make sacrifices, stand up and protect her children while the window for survival still was open. After the revolution, the Price family had no chance. The four daughters escaped Africa through being carried, buried, ferried and married: desperate options for a desperate mother. The point that Kingsolver made is that parents, especially mothers must have the courage to do what is the best for the children, not for themselves. Selfishness breeds children's destruction; sacrifice springs enrichment. Orleanna and Nathan Price were primarily selfish characters. When Orleanna escaped Nathan and Africa, she didn't have the needs and lives of her children before her own well-being. When she started walking away from Kilanga, she didn't even gather her children behind her and take them along. She simply walked and her three surviving kids followed by their own desire. She made no real effort to help them escape Africa, and only one did. Her and Nathan's selfishness destroyed their family.

Kingsolver's biases are evident in the plot and characters of The Poisonwood Bible. She wears her politics on her shirtsleeve, and it interferes with the progression of the novel. Because she turns Leah into her mouthpiece, she feels necessary to extend the book 150 pages past what it should have been so Leah could evidence all of the evils that the American government committed in the Congo. The reader must remember that Barbara is no historian, but a novelist-writing fiction, not fact. Although the stage of the Congolese revolution was perfect for the novel, it ultimately distracted the familial theme of providing an emotional nest of comfort for one's offspring.

Nathan Price is much too one-dimensional. Kingsolver makes no effort to develop him any more than a ruthless, overbearing father who is planning and living his own penitence at the expense of his children. His motivations and his internal struggle, unlike Orleanna, are anything but transparent. On that note, it seems that any novel these days that involves Christian missionaries is also one-sided. Kingsolver makes too many expositions that Christian proselytizing is trivial in non-Christian cultures. As a two-year foreign Christian missionary in impoverished and impecunious locations, I thought that Kingsolver's personal anti-proselyte bias bled through the pages. If that was an intended theme of the book, she did it by telling only one side of the story by not developing Nathan.


Rating:
Summary: Can't get into it.
Review: I had high hopes for this book, although it being an Oprah book has nothing to do with it. My friend recommended it to me with stellar reviews, so I jumped in, only to be bored, sleepy, and plain uninterested, After multiple attempts to be entertained, I gave up.

Simply: it's a bore.