Rating: 
Summary: 40 years of 5 fictional white women in the dark continent
Review: A southern missionary family plunges naively into deepest Congo to bring the shining light to the natives in the 1960's, told in plucky short though somewhat predictable chapters by Mom and the various daughters. The various characters are well developed and all bring very different perspectives to life in the family and the politics of Africa; Kingsolver weaves them together well and is admirably non-judgmental in letting the story tell itself. In my straw polls of friends & family I've noticed a polarity between those who love her earlier book 'animal dreams', vs those who love 'the bean trees' (..and nobody likes 'pigs in heaven'...); 'Poisonwood' is a more ambitious and complex story then the earlier works, however it is also not quite so compellingly and beautifully composed. And I note the same people tend to polarize again in preferring either the first half or the second half of 'Poisonwood'. Bottom line: worth the read, but unless you're pulled by the african setting you might start liking kingsolver better with 'animal dreams' or 'bean trees'.
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Summary: Fantastic read for those of us who have lived in africa
Review: What an amazing story - an acurate and wonderful account of life in the African wilds. I too had the struggles the family faced (garden wiped out by one rain storm, army ants attacking me in the night). I weeped for the characters and how Africa transformed them. I highly recomend this for anyone with an interest in living over seas (in a non ex-patriot lifestyle) to recieive the full story of how time in that area can transform you. Barbara Kingsglover is an amazing author with an ability to turn feelings, sights, smells for an a area of the world least travled (and lived in) by Americans into words on paper.
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Summary: Tata Jesus is Bängala
Review: I really liked this book... just finished it last night. I'm normally a Stephen King reader, and though King may keep me a little more riveted and make my heart pound a little harder, he's never educated me the way this book has. I learned so much about Africa and the Congo, and about just how easy it is to live in the first world. I never really imagined how hard it could be to actually live with nature, instead of on top of it.There's been complaints amongst reviewers that the book got too political or educational near the end, but I really appreciated that aspect of the novel. Great characters too... Rachel, Axelroot, Orleanna, Adah - they're all so memorable and loveable. I recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: A Bittersweet Reality to Make Your Heart Think
Review: Having been on many short-term foreign mission trips and aspiring to one day have a more permanent position in the mission field, I found The Poisonwood Bible a thought- provoking journey that caused me to search my heart for truth. I was not so much a reader as I was a traveler journeying with Kingsolver to the Congo in this fictional, but bitingly real experience. Rich, vivid words are masterfully used to pull the reader into the world of senses where one can taste, hear, feel, and smell the intensity of Africa. For example:
"The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason. Every space is filled with life: delicate, poisonous frogs war-painted like skeletons, clutched in copulation, secreting their precious eggs onto dripping leaves. Vines strangling their own kin in the everlasting wrestle for sunlight. The breathing of monkeys. The glide of a snake belly on a branch. A single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into the uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of the rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. The forest eats itself and lives forever."
Even as I am drawn in to experience nature's intensity, I am introduced to the Congolese people, challenged to know them, and if I dare... embrace them. Kingsolver not only displays a portrait of these people but allows me to step into their world:
"The usual bypasser is woman sauntering slowly down the road with bundles balanced on her head. These women are pillars of wonder, defying gravity while wearing the hohum aspect of perfect tedium. They can sit, stand, talk, shake a stick at a drunk man, reach around their backs to fetch forth a baby to nurse, all without dropping their piled-high bundles. They are like ballet dancers entirely unaware they are on a stage. I cannot take my eyes from them."
I need to issue a warning, to be fair to those who are only seeking a tourist's adventure in this voyage, that Kingsolver's reality is the painful, sometimes unforgiving, clash between different worlds, cultures, and religious beliefs. As an American born and raised, and a Christian by belief, my heart was torn in a deep and mysterious way as I found myself relating to both sides of the battle and in some instances even turning from the people I claim as my own to embrace the needs and truth of the unfamiliar. This journey left me searching for balance. It also left me with an understanding that when people are forceful and aggressive, imposing personal beliefs upon a culture, a people, and a way of life they do not understand, they unknowingly abort any chance of bringing a positive impact to that place. Kingsolver focuses sympathy on the African woman, not on the missionary in this passage:
"Then he stopped, just froze perfectly still. With one of his huge hands he reached out to the congregation, pulling them in. With the other he pointed at a woman near the fire. Her big long breasts lay flat on her chest like they'd been pressed down with an iron, but she did seem heedless of it. She was toting a long-legged child all straddly on her hip, and with her free hand was scratching at her short hair. She looked around nervously, for every pair of eyes in the place had followed Father's accusing gaze straight to her nakedness."
More than ever, I am stirred through The Poisonwood Bible to realize that appreciation, compassion, and love are the very gifts that will build the bridge between different worlds, peoples, and beliefs. As these gifts are presented and exchanged, both worlds can be stronger. Kingsolver brings us not only food for thought, but a feast for the mind, heart, and soul. It is up to voyager if he will pull up a chair and eat or bypass a chance to be changed.
Rating: 
Summary: I Can't Help Putting This Book Down
Review: This is a negative review. Let the "Unhelpful" clicking begin. At least read and respond first. I couldn't get too far into this one. I had to read Pigs in Heaven for school and I didn't like it. A friend told me she felt the same but she heard good things about this. I gave it a try as a believer in second chances. Ugh and Double Ugh. Dubbed Kingsolver's most ambitious novel, it aggressively demonstrates Kingsolver's flaws as a writer. The fact that she is popular is more a comment on contemporary literary tastes than on her talent. That said, Kingsolver is not a bad writer. Still, I defy anyone to answer the following critiques: 1) Kingsolver has yet to create a sympathetic or realistic male character, at least in the books I've read. This is as striking a failure as Hemingway's females, only that at least Hemingway's women are sympathetic. Kingsolver's determined belief in the big bad religious white male is just a non-plus to anyone but the most devoted Michael Moorite. This personal bias bodes ill for her personal life and extremely handicaps both her literary range and the depth of her social commentary. I found myself continually rooting for the preacher husband to do something good. Everytime he was on the verge of being on the verge of it, he'd go beat his wife for no good reason. Quite noticeably he never gets a 1st person chapter, testament to the author's failings. That might have been interesting 30 years ago but now it's pretty played. 2) Kingsolver recycles the same character archetypes from the other books of hers that I've read. She is lauded for 3D characters but she relies on common contemporary archetypes and character progressions, like the long-suffering wife with abusive husband, the materialistic shallow girl who may or may not learn about true meaning, and the strange but creative outcast. She is so brainwashed by a life obsession with these archetypes that she fails to deviate from them to make subtle comments that could at least make her interpretation fresh. 3) She slowly devolves into Ayn Rand-esque diatribes, only Rand didn't pretend to be writing fiction as much as Kingsolver does. What's worse is that she is not a particularly creative or subtle political or historical commentator. Say what you will about Rand, at least she was pretty original. Kingsolver is quite blatantly a child of the 60's and has nothing refreshing to say about imperialism or the Belgian Congo. For a wonderful history on the subject, read Pakenham's The Scramble for Africa. 4) Originally the stylistic variation is interesting but soon becomes tiresome. The ornate section openers are as well written as they are blatantly political and, frankly, naive to the point of stupidity on politics. Otherwise, the ruminations of the special education child quickly become extremely tedious leaving the other daughters to give the story. The essence of my disappointment with Kingsolver is that I do believe she has skill, it's just that she needs an editor to clamp shut her overactive political rants and trite social commentary so that she can get down to the business of doing what she does well: tell a woman's tale with remarkable sensitivity to the subtleties of the ever perplexing female psyche. Kingsolver's books just aren't timeless. They are wonderful examples of contemporary thought to the extent that they are entirely reliant on the standard 'non-standard' thought of our time. This makes them popular; it also severely detracts from their long-term value as rich texts worthy of reinterpretation and careful study. Either you agree with Kingsolver or you don't. She leaves you no doubt what her message is. Thus, your opinion of the book is entirely dependent on how much you like Kingsolver's outlook. 20 years from now, 50 years from now, texts like these head back to the dustbin because the author's message is so explicit and hence rather dull. A rereading of her books does not reveal fresh interpretations, subtle internal commentary, or cleverly disguised themes. Those are the things that distinguish Homer or Joyce or Milton or Twain from the Kingsolvers of the literary world.
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Summary: Rich Characters, Fabulous Setting, Magnificent Drama
Review: American World War II veteran Nathan Pierce, a fire-and-brimstone preacher and tyrannical parent and husband, decides to take his family on a mission to the Congo on the eve of that country's independence from Belgium. His teenage daughters and his wife are less than enthusiastic. The book takes us from the Pierce's initial landing in the Congo to the girls' adulthood. Each daughter takes a very different path. None of the five Pierce women are unaffected or even necessarily whole after the mission. Their lives and their ideals are changed profoundly by their experiences. The oldest daughter, Rachel, turns fifteen at the beginning of the mission. Her mind is fully absorbed with boys, clothes, makeup, and the other typical interests of a middle-class American teenage girl in 1959. Of course, without running water or even recognizable food in the heart of the Congo, lipstick and school dances are unequivocally out of the question. She counts the days until she can leave. The twins, Adah and Leah, are thirteen when the mission begins. Leah adores her father and has decided to make the best of the situation. She shadows him and ultimately becomes the truest missionary in the family, although not in a religious sense. Mute Adah, who due to a birth defect sees herself as so different as sometimes not even as a part of the world, is brilliant, creative, and critical of her fanatical father. Ruth May, the baby of the family, is along for the ride but unexpectedly comes to "move the cheese" for her mother, who is probably looking for it in another place anyway. The girls' mother, Orleanna, is trapped in her marriage and in the Congo, subject to the whims and passions of her unbalanced husband and the demands of giving her daughters a sense of "normalcy" in spite of the bizarre events and primitive living conditions she encounters in Africa. Political transition swirls around the family, touching them in ways that they cannot even imagine in the beginning. The interplay between the various members of the Pierce family and the Congolese comes to define the women and their destinies. Their reactions to the depredations and horror they survive further defines them and breathes life into them. The book is told in the voices of the five female Pierces. Each voice is unique. The individual characters are well-developed and consistent. Adah's voice is deep, rich and poetic, even giving us insight to her insights at the end when she rereads her childhood diary entries. Rachel is predictable in her shallow, materialistic way. That predictability is, in my humble opinion, a necessary aspect of her character. She is consistently egocentric and the most like her father. Leah is open and accepting and giving and loving. She comes to see her white skin as a disgrace to be overcome in light of the abuses of colonial and foreign powers. At five, Ruth May is the funniest and also the canniest. The mother, Orleanna, is the saddest and weakest of the women. Her character development is also the weakest, but I think that is more because the book is really about the older daughters and their father, not about Orleanna. Orleanna has an important role but is not a primary protagonist. We cry for Orleanna, we rant against Nathan's unfairness, we pound the cover of the book at how dense Nathan's skull is. We limp in resignation and terror with Adah and we admire her wordplay and philosophy. We approve of Leah's integrity. We long to stroke Ruth May's fevered forehead when she falls ill with malaria. We believe Nathan is not the brightest light in the night sky despite his intentions of bringing "Christian truth" to the natives of Africa. We snicker when we realize that he calls Jesus a poisonwood tree in each and every church service he holds -- not intentionally but because he either cannot or does not attempt to master his command of the local language. Nathan's bullheaded wrongness reverberates throughout the book. He is not sympathetic to the native way of life in the jungle. He is told that the villagers won't go to the river for baptism because crocodiles have eaten native children who have gotten too close to the water, yet he maintains a dream of river baptism as the only real way to save all of those African souls. He never learns the language of the people he has chosen to live among. He dominates his family physically, mentally and emotionally. To punish his three older daughters, he is fond of "Giving the Verse," or citing a verse of the Bible and requiring the girls to count back from it 100 verses, then write them all. His intention is to get them to understand where their thinking is wrong. Especially with Adah, though, his plan backfires. Nathan Pierce's children and wife are afraid of him. Eventually they are scornful of him. As independence threatens, the Pierces are advised to leave the Congo. Violence and even war are expected by those who know the region and its politics. Nathan stubbornly refuses to go despite pleas from his wife and daughters. When the Republic of Zaire is born the Pierce family is trapped in their mission by assassinations, rebel guerillas, hunger, poverty, and Nathan's inexhaustable missionary zeal. The futures of the five Pierce women are impacted more by Nathan's refusal to leave than by the decision to go to the Congo in the first place. The only thing missing from the book is how the father's voice might have sounded. I would like to have seen him live through his own symbolic Getting of The Verse and hear his (probably psychotic) reaction to it -- although Adah's references to "Our Father," Leah's descriptions, and the conversations and insights of all of the girls and Orleanna give us a great deal of insight into the workings of his warped and stubborn mind. Like Rachel, Nathan would not have been able to shift his paradigm to accommodate the alien nature of that small village in the Congo. He was not capable of empathy with the objects of his mission. The Poisonwood Bible is beautifully written. Adah's voice is my favorite. She is brilliant, unlike her older sister Rachel who is shallow and somewhat stupid. She is the antithesis of her father. She has the best sense of the irony of the family's situation and the best understanding of the way the minds of the others work. Kingsolver's own brilliance as a writer comes through in this book, which is meticulously researched. She uses four languages to explain her characters and their points of view, and uses them beautifully. The history she recalls is not the dry stuff of textbooks but the living hardships and uncertainties of the people affected by it. History is incidental to the story, but the political and social atmosphere of the time and place are essential to it. I highly recommend this book to anyone, male or female. Despite being told by women, this is a book about a time and a place and a society. Those of us of Western European heritage will realize how little we appreciate or even know about the Dark Continent when we read this masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: The Poisonwood Bible
Review: This is a brilliant book, beautifully written, that keeps you entertained as well as intellectually stimulated. One of my favorite aspects of the book is the way it is written - told by five very different women of one family. This style gives an innovative perspective into the lives of people you might otherwise resent or despise greatly, and makes one think about how we perceive people and how mistaken we might be about who they really are inside.
In addition, you learn first hand how different cultures are, reflected, among other things, through different languages. Who can read the book and forget the infamous, "Tata Jesus is Bangala"? Do yourself a favor - take the time to sit down and read this book. It is worth every second.
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Summary: Posinwood Winner!
Review: The Poisonwood Bible is by far the best book I have ever read. I had trouble putting it down, but wanted to so it would last that much longer.
The story of of four very different sisters forced to live in a place that they tought they might like and the trials and tribulations that they go through is excellent. The emtions that were poured into the book were bueatiful and heart-warming.
I am not the average reader of this book, so maybe that is what made it that much more amazing to me.
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Summary: A Touching Eye Opener
Review: One of the few books that I have read latley that kept me interested from start to finish. Despite the frequent bible refrences, I didn't feel inindated with religious rhetoric or feel preached to. The story is easy to get lost in. I couldn't put the book down.
Rating: 
Summary: Stop halfway through.
Review: When I started The Poisonwood Bible, all I could think about was how impressed I was. Kingsolver's description is excellent, and the sense of gloom, threat, and bewilderment-- spiritually, politically, and physically-- made me deeply thankful I live on this continent. She manages to cycle through the viewpoints of the family's women without confusing the reader, and although the childs-eye views grate at times, the gears shift fast enough, and the story is good enough, that they doesn't present a major obstacle. The real problem comes late in the book, when Kingsolver goes all political. Perhaps if I too were furious about the state of affairs in the Belgian Congo, it wouldn't be such a big deal, but it really spoiled the book for me. Make no mistake-- there are many good things about The Poisonwood Bible (including some I haven't mentioned at all), and the early part is a real show of power. But the polemical, political ranting toward the end puts a millstone around its neck.
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