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Summary: A terrible masterpiece, in the most American way.
Review: Let it be understood, all ye who enter here: Barbara Kingsolver is a Yank through and through, as American as apple pie and wormwood. This magnificent, ghastly, unfair, and transcendent novel places Kingsolver at the forefront of American literature and specifically as the latest classic practitioner of that most American of genres: the Southern Gothic. In fact, what she has done in "The Poisonwood Bible" is to bring the Southern Gothic home to its origins in slave-trading Africa. Understand that, and one will be able to swallow the book whole, just as it is meant to be, while coming out shaken and morally reversed, just as one is supposed to do. To say this is to say that while John Leonard was correct in comparing Kingsolver to Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing, the comparison hinges on his identification of Kingsolver as an American writer of postcolonial literature. Gordimer and Lessing write with patience: a detachment and insight born of being born guilty and having lived with guilt over long, productive lives. They may suffer from it, but compared to Kingsolver, they don't complain about it. As such, they have a more authentic hold on the actual experience of reckoning without being able to reproduce it one-tenth as overwhelmingly for the reader. What Kingsolver does, much like the Faulkner she most resembles in this novel, is to immmerse her reader in the experience of atonement to such an extent that when we begin to question what the Price family is paying for, the answers--cogent in themselves--have the frustrating effect of seeming somewhat beside the point. The political arguments between Leah (the nearest person to a hero) and her sister Rachel (one of the most frightening fictional villains of all time, in the skin of your average 1950's Redbook girl) are interesting, even convincing in large part, but in the context of what has gone before, they sound just a little as if Job and his comforters were climactically debating the relative merits of skin balms and delousing agents. "Oh, Rachel, Rachel," Leah bursts out, before starting a lecture on the ruin wrought by world capitalism; I may not be the only reader to have heard its echo as "Oh, Goneril, Goneril." All this, however, may be the point, too. The Southern Gothic is unique among genres of American literature in being able to afford bathos; it takes itself seriously enough to be able to take itself preposterously. The world-improving agendas of writers as diverse as Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor have sounded hubristic before, when reduced to brass tacks, and come out sounding all the more Biblical for their sense of the ultimate futility of efforts to root out original sin with good intentions. No wonder that missionaries are the ideal Southern Gothic subjects. The bathos of the Prices' downfall only adds to its grandeur. In point of fact, what the Prices do in the Congo is unpleasant, but petty and precisely beside the point; none of them, even Rachel (potentially a more powerful emblem of prerevolutionary negritude in her blank whiteness, her unstirred passivity, than the assertive near-monster, Leah), is bad on anything like the scale of the engineers of Lumumba's death, or their parallel in the bigoted witch-doctor who brings about the novel's most tragic episode. This event, though horrible enough, is (as Kingsolver would remind us) not on the scale of the fate of the Congo: the fact that we're made to care about it as a form of divine retribution, and accept all that follows more or less sheepishly, is an example of Southern Gothic technique at its most masterful. None of it would work if there were any nice people in the book--not excluding a saintly child, saintlier Father Flanagan, and brave African rebel from central casting. As Stephen King writes of the Southern Gothic denouement in another context: the odds are evened; "the [protagonists] pay with their lives. The problem is that the reader may think the dues paid were just ones." The problem, but also the solution. None of it, also, would work if Kingsolver's prose were not able to sustain its gorgeous heat, reminiscent of Sylvia Plath and Andrea Dworkin, over the course of nearly 600 pages. This is a feat in itself, making up for the fact that we are never allowed to identify with the character whose mad righteousness should give us an insight into the attraction of missionary evil: Nathan Price. It is a subtle choice on Kingsolver's part to permit us to do so only through his daughter, Leah, most like him of all, and finally most opposed to him. If other characters in "Poisonwood" exemplify other deadly sins (Orleanna, despair; Rachel, sloth and avarice; Adah, envy; Nathan, wrath; and Anatole, just possibly, lust), Leah exemplifies Pride, naturally the most tempting of all to the engage. Leah is humbled with the rest. By novel's end she realizes that all she must do to rid herself of whiteness is to adapt to a changing world, rather than saving it; it's perhaps excusable that this is only the penultimate revelation, the ultimate being a sentence in praise of Communism--Communism, not socialism. (Really? Everywhere in the world? Surely a chronicler of shattered dreams can do better.) Leah should know better, but she doesn't; perhaps a sequel could take her up on it. But one of the requirements of the Southern Gothic is that it allows for no sequels. Any affirmation sounds pale at the end of a novel of such total condemnation, and an affirmation of a truly noble, truly lost dream is probably as good as any.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best pick for a first-time Kingsolver reader...
Review: Don't hate me for dissing this book, but as a reader who LOVED Animal Dreams (by Kingsolver), I couldn't get into The Poisonwood Bible. The main thing that bothered me was that each chapter is narrated by one of four sisters. They have interesting personalities but I kept getting them confused. Their voices weren't unique enough for me to distinguish. That structure grew tiresome and I stopped reading the book after about 50 pages. I also found the topic of a Baptist family moving to Africa to convert people off-putting. Even though it is supposed to be set in the past, I don't want to relive that time period and be reminded of that kind of mentality. The Poisonwood Bible should not be the first novel you pick up by Kingsolver. A better sampling would be Animal Dreams. It is more accessible to the reader.
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Summary: Marvelous
Review: I was also required to read this novel in school and I think it is the most powerful book I have ever read. I am definitely going to read more of Kingsolver's works. This is, without question, a novel I will continue to cherish for many, many years. I recommend this to anyone and everyone. Don't rob yourself of such a wonderful story!
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Summary: TERRIBLE
Review: This is the worst book i have ever read...It put me to sleep after every third page...It had no plot...It did not go anywhere...I would have stoped reading after the 10th page, but i was required to read this garbage for school...DONT READ THIS BOOK
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Summary: awful book
Review: this is the worst book i have ever read---it put me to sleep i had to read it for school and it was dreadful
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Summary: Beautiful Story
Review: I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book after reading many rave reviews and recommendations. This story takes a very hard look at Christianity and Politics, and shows how a modern American family fairs, when faced with the hardships of an uncivilised and unforgiving Congo jungle. I found the book very hard to 'get into' and halfway through the book, found I was enjoying the story, but it didn't set me alight with enthusiasm. The second half of this glorious story however, blew me away. The maturing characters, the haunting memories of the family, a mothers grief, all were so beautifully written, I had to read passages over and over again to savour the phrases and paragraphs. A brilliant and intelligent novel.
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Summary: the poisonwood bible
Review: beautiful, beautiful book. i have read it over five times and still love it. kingsolvers best work.
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Summary: Author is a true genius but a trifle Luddite
Review: I was enthralled by the character development and the insights into jungle life. The relations between the family members and the villagers were most interestingly presented and further developed over time. I could but only marvel over the author's genius. I loved the characters still even in the last half, which many reviewers decry. However, the characters assembled become gradually Luddite, and this may reflect the author's own personal philosophy which may be viewed from her inspiration references which include Al Gore's Luddite environmental work. Still nevertheless, I accepted the Luddite philosophies of the characters because the author displays them with such ease and rationalizes them, given the conditions of those characters. Having read many reviews herein, the author does make historical mistakes, so I would like to say that her characterization of the Portuguese Catholic clergy as slavetraders is false. Her favorable view of the Cubans in Angola is overstated. Many Cubans returned from Angola infected by some of the diseases that Adah observed as native to the region. The author is not afraid of the Marxist-leaning leaders even in Angola. She cleverly avoids marking the leftist government of Angola as saintly, yet only in Angola in an agricultural quasi-commune, may happiness be found. I think that the author is clever in the insinuation of the Luddite and leftist thinking into the thinking of her characters, because the experiences of the characters justify their conclusions. Am sorry to see that so many reviewers found errors of contemporary fact and of Christian religious practice. Yet this is a great tome, and I gave it four stars because some of the historical errors detract from a great read. I love the subtle aspects of some of the observations of the characters, the insights into language usages, the poetry, and the changes in development of some of the complex villager characters.
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Summary: Akin to Faulkner's *The Sound and the Fury*
Review: This compelling and brilliant work by the gifted Barbara Kingsolver stands stylistically alongside Faulkner's *The Sound and the Fury.* Told from the separate viewpoints of a mother and her four daughters who follow their missionary husband/father to the Congo, the story unfolds with slow suspense, like a flower that can't quite catch a coy sun on a variably cloudy day. It is alternately and simultaneously a tale of self-destruction, coping, the death of innocents and devils, and redemption. Kingsolver is a master storyteller with the power to rivet attention so completely that while you are reading her, airplane turbulence, the need for sleep, and even a lover's touch can go unnoticed.
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Summary: My favorite book of all time
Review: After reading "I dreamed of Africa" I became interesting in more books about Africa. So I picked this one up, and it was an amazing read. The story is told by four daughters and the mother in the Price Family. Their father/husband, is a Baptist minister, who brings the family to the Congo during a tumeltous time in history. The opening offers a foreshadowing of events to come, and when we reach the end, the meaning of it is quite clear. Africa is alive, and can bring the inhabitants to its mercy. The Price family suffer hardship in the Congo, as missionaries trying to bring Christianity to the small village in which the live. The villagers look upon them with curiousity and wonder, and are not intersted in the regilous message they bring. Kingsolver's words brought the Congo alive for me, that I could almost breathe the air. This is an enriching story, and I hope to read future books by Kingsolver.
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