Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Insightful and delightful!
Review: Great novel. Kingsolver is an insightful writer. I loved the fact that she did research about the people and the culture. As an African, I was very sceptical to read a novel written by a white American woman whom I believed would never fully understand the culture and psychology of the people she was writing about but she did a great job. Characters are well developed and the plot is also engaging. I recommend this book for all.
Rating: 
Summary: Loving Doubt
Review: i remember one of the few tricks from college english that still sticks with me to this day. never fully believe any narrator. this story is wonderful because it challenges you to grasp these separate stories and decide for yourself what is true and what's colored by their unique traits and shortcomings. even leah's voice, so infused with passion and truth, eventually succumbs to its own traps. i loved the metamorphosis of adah's language as time passes, from something strangely unique and tortured to something slightly more homogoneous yet slyly revealing.the pacing of this book is good, except for the last 50 pages. the "summary" chapters seem a tiny bit forced--there's no need to try and wrap this up neatly--or as neatly as most people would like. anyway this was a great book!!
Rating: 
Summary: Remember, it's a novel!
Review: This is an interesting novel, but I am concerned that naive readers may believe that the book provides a true picture of missionaries and their work. After all, not many people have had the opportunity to work for extended periods in isolated parts of Africa. I did so, for a number of years working on the transmission of tropical diseases, which often put me in contact with, and dependent on missionaries of various faiths. I can assure the reader that the characters in the novel have nothing in common with reality, nor is it necessary they should. But it is something to keep in mind.
Rating:
Summary: Succumbs to its flaws.
Review: A very ambitious book, indeed, in which Kingsolver tells the story from five different viewpoints, five unique voices. And she tackles Africa, attempting to tell a story about the Congo/Zaire that will relate to us, her First-World readers. It's ironic, then, that Kingsolver, while trying to write a book on Africa, actually writes about book about the United States. The first part of "The Poisonwood Bible" is an interesting narrative as told by the four Price daughters of a Baptist missionary family adapting - or failing to adapt - to the culture and climate of a Congolese jungle village in the 1960s. The four girls each have a distinct voice, representing four distinct types - from Rachel, the spoiled American teenager, to Leah, the intelligent achiever who ends up "going native." But the book quickly turns political. Kingsolver has the Prices in the Congo through independence, Lumumba's election and subsequent assassination financed by the CIA, and the unpleasant aftermath of civil war and chaos. The different girls soon devolve into political allegories. Rachel's spoiled teen act devolves into the racist, ignorant pro-American persona that is ultimately responsible in Kingsolver's world for the subjugation of African democracy and prosperity. Leah, the achiever, remains in Africa and becomes a kind of heroic figure of opposition to American power and culture, renouncing material comforts to ally herself with the New Africa. Kingsolver's tone gets preachy, and the complex problems of the African subcontinent get simplified into a single palatable message: the West is keeping Africa down. I don't doubt Kingsolver's resolve, her beliefs, and I'm not questioning her research or sources one bit. Her depiction of Africa feels real. But like so many other books about Africa written by outsiders ("A Bend in the River," "Heart of Darkness," etc.), "The Poisonwood Bible" really describes and characterizes its author and her culture more than it does Africa. In this book, we are treated to a distinctly American depiction of travel, of prosperity, and of culture. In this book, Kingsolver implies through the voice of Leah, that Africa was once a primal Arcadia until European explorers "discovered" the continent and enslaved its people and apportioned the land into colonies. African's inability to adapt to Western culture and technology - according to Kingsolver -- has to do with the intractability of the land, and the belief system created by thousands of years' of tribal tradition and culture. Westerners only sully or contaminate Africa's ideals and "natural" systems of government. Ideas shared, ironically, by the original European visitors to Africa. Also, Kingsolver indicts America's over-prosperous culture. Leah upon returning to Georgia after living in Africa, finds her cheap student housing overly oppressive. So much so that she has to move back to Africa as soon as possible. Which is a truly typical American reaction to prosperity: what other culture's people would spurn comfort and plenty and return to poverty and misery - for an idea? America is chock full of such self-abnegating or dangerous ideals and past-times: vegetarianism, eating disorders, weight-loss programs, Buddhist retreats, long-distance hikers, extreme sports. I don't wish to excoriate Kingsolver for these ideals. This naïve optimism is the main reason I love my country, the United States. This belief that there is an ideal to aspire to, to sacrifice for. That there can be a perfect society built on Earth. That someone should, in fact, try to do so. However, at times her book deals clumsily with these issues. Characters lose their complexity when they begin to stand for an ideal. Rachel, for example, becomes uniformly bad, and loses all trace of humanity. She's easy to hate. As such, she may be an effective tool to denigrate a political view, a propaganda tool, but she ceases to be a quality literary device. She tells us nothing about the human character. Though the writing is at times brilliant, and the first part of the book was engrossing, overall "The Poisonwood Bible" succumbs to its flaws.
Rating:
Summary: why ruin it?
Review: Why would Roxie 52 feel the need to ruin the book for everyone else by already telling us how it ends before we read it? I've just bought it but I see no need to even bother reading it now. Have some sense next time!
Rating:
Summary: The best I've ever read
Review: This is my favorite novel of all time. I couldn't put it down! The characters are amazing. I found myself crying more than once while reading this wonderful novel. I highly recommend it to anyone!!
Rating: 
Summary: Should have stopped while the going was good
Review: I really enjoyed the first part of this book. Many of the other reviewers have already rehashed the story, so I am not going to tell it over again. But basically, the story reached a climax and ended when Ruth May died and the mom decided she'd had enough. She packs up, and takes her remaining daughters on a treacherous journey out of Africa, leaving the preacher dad far behind. This is where Kingsolver should have ended the story. At the very most, maybe added in one short chapter for each of the players, say, ten years into the future, just so we know what happened to them. Another 25 pages at the absolute most. But no, Kingsolver decided to use the next 200 pages to go through the next 30 years, and fill our heads with political blathering. History is supposed to be a backdrop in historical novels, not overtake them. But that is what Kingsolver did. The characters become lost in her political ramblings. It reached the point where I was just skimming to find out what was happening to the characters. The history of the Congo is tragic, that I know. I have read a great deal about the history of Africa, and traveled in Africa, so I am not writing this from the point of an ignoramous. The US and Belgium were much to blame for the course that history took for the worse. But I wanted to read a novel, not a history text. There are plenty of good ones to pick from. What Kingsolver did was divert from her story, and set up her own private soapbox, hoping that she had a captive audience. If the book had ended with the flight of Orleanna and her girls, then I would have given this book 5 stars. Unfortunately, authors like Kingsolver often don't know what to stop while the going is good.
Rating:
Summary: Betty Crocker meets the Belgian Congo
Review: I have heard it said that this is Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and without a doubt, it is true. Once you start this novel, both of you have taken on a commitment; her's was to make a thought provoking novel, and your's is to let a fantastically wonderful saga unfold. It is quite a story!! It is in the 1950's. Nathan Price decides to take his entire family, his bible and all his personality disorders to Africa on a mission of a lifetime. Completely naive and unprepared (all of them) it is a hilariously tragic experience for not only the family of 6 but the villagers as well. Briefly, to yank away women in the 1950's to such a barren place was nearly criminal in intent. We are speaking of Betty Crocker life styles, frilly aprons, appetizers, cake mixes and 60 watt bulbs. That is just speaking for the mother, Orleanna. Additionally, you uproot 4 daughters, equally unprepared for such an adventure and the situation becomes tenuous at best. Fly them from their suburb home to the outskirts of the most basic of African villages and you have chaos rising with the moon and setting with the sun. How do five females cope with their dominant male member? It gets as basic as this, when after time it becomes quite clear that Father Nathan is mentally unraveling, leaving his family completely vulnerable to not only the elements but the political chaos falling out in the Belgian Congo. It is not enough to fall on one's knees when one is starving and their life in peril. It falls on these women to pull it together and work their way out of a situation they should never have been involved in, but for the sake of their insane "father". As the "father" becomes increasingly difficult, the family tries to survive on the good graces of those that were not so offended by his ways of pushing religion and baptism on them. It becomes increasingly perilous when the father loses his ability to compromise with the tribal elders and the missionary foundation closes due to political chaos. Left now without any funding, the mother and daughters feel only relief that they will all have to abort their mission and return to the states. But, the "father" sees everything differently in his maniacle religious fervor and he insists that the family stick it out where they are so as to prove their faith in their God. This decision forces everyone's hand to take actions they never dreamed possible to stop their father from the family's destruction.
Rating:
Summary: Great characters lost in the political overtones
Review: I loved the story of the Price family and how life in the Congo changed all of them. The rotating narrators of the story were a bit distracting, but it was interesting to see situations from multiple points of view. I started to really care about the characters by the middle of the novel, when the focus of the story suddenly shifted from the characters to a primer on Congo politics. By the time I got to the end of the book, I was just skimming the pages - try to pick out the eventual fate of the family from admist the political drudgery.
Rating:
Summary: Redemption at a Price
Review: When Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible became a New York Times Bestseller and selection of Oprah's book club, I avoided it, figuring that is the kind of soft-headed "redemption" story that would make for a bad television mini-series. Part of me also assumed that the portrayal of the missionary father would be the sort of unsophisticated denunciation of proselytizing that the current culture feels no need to defend. With the hub-bub quite gone now (and the book available to me at a bargain price), I picked up the novel to find, of course, that I was wrong on both counts. It is a redemption story, but one that is about the hard work and pain of real healing. It is also the account of the worst kind of missionary and what he has wrought, but it also attempts to discover why this man is the way he is, and the book also reminds us of the other kind of missionary, the kind that does understand love and grace and forgiveness. Kingsolver presents us with first person narratives of the five women of the Price family: Orleanna, the mother; Rachel, the shallow beauty; Leah, the earnest believer; Adah, Leah's twin, whose deformed body and quirky mental process set her apart from the others; and Ruth May, the girl child. In a Faulkneresque account, we see through each woman's eyes the story of the Price family as they leave their home in Bethlehem, GA to take over a mission outpost in the Congo. While Nathan Price, the dominating Our Father, never speaks his own tale, he is the center of all their lives, influencing their actions even after his death. Determined not to be tainted by the African darkness, Nathan refuses all local help and doggedly insists that his American ways will save the lost African children. After a series of horrific events-some natural, some the result of the Price's stubbornness-the breaking point arrives with the death of one of the children. Orleanna quietly packs up the remaining children and leaves her unfeeling husband in the bush. The rest of the book chronicles the development of these women set against the backdrop of the political upheavals of Africa in general and the Congo specifically. Kingsolver tries to explore not only the political hypocrisy of western (and U.S.) policy in the area but also the difficulty of applying a Western political system to a way of life based on a non-commercial lifestyle. An aging Ada, now walking straight, observes towards the end of the book that "we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes." Kingsolver shows us each part of that equation for each woman as they struggle not only to make a way for themselves in a quickly changing word but also as they struggle to fill the daughter/sister shaped hole left in their lives while trying to throw off the burden of the madman they left in the jungle. ... Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is a book about redemption, but it is a hard-won redemption that the characters may not even realize they have won. Does the pain in their lives come from a raging caricature of a missionary? Perhaps, but it is more a portrait of a man whose own fears and failures drive him rather than faith in a loving, forgiving Jesus. As one of the other missionaries says, "There are Christians, and then there are Christians." If the book offers indictments, it is a more generalized indictment of hypocritical government and uninformed good intentions.
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