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Summary: kingsolver - what an encounter !
Review: I COMMENCED READING THIS BOOK NOT BEING FAMILIAR WITH THE AUTHOR. WHAT A PLEASANT SURPRISE IT WAS TO ENCOUNTER A STORY THAT WAS SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT FROM ITS COUNTERPARTS!!
THE STORY CENTERS AROUND THE PRICE FAMILY WHO ARE TAKEN TO THE BELGIUM CONGO IN THE 1950's BY THEIR BAPTIST FATHER ON A MISSION. WELL IT TURNS OUT TO BE MORE THAN A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FOR MOST MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY, ESPECIALLY AS SOME CONSIDER A BETTY CROCKER CAKE MIX AN ESSENTIAL ITEM TO TAKE WITH THEM!
ONE OF THE UNUSUAL ASPECTS OF THIS STORY IS THAT IT IS TOLD BY THE MOTHER AND HER FOUR DAUGHTERS IN ALTERNATIVE CHAPTERS. IT SEEMS VERY ONE SIDED NARRATIVE AT FIRST (AS REV. PRICE ISN'T INCLUDED AS ONE OF THE NARRATORS) HOWEVER, AS YOU DELVE FURTHER INTO THE STORY IT ALMOST SEEMS UNNECESSARY DUE TO THE VARIOUS VIEWPOINTS OF THE OTHER FIVE CHARACTERS. IT ALSO LEAVES THE READER WITH LOTS TO PONDER AND ROOM TO FORM YOUR OWN OPINION ( WHICH NOT MANY NOVELS ALLOW FOR).THE CHARACTERS BELIEFS AND EXPECTATIONS ARE CHALLENGED IN THEIR NEW SURROUNDINGS OF THE CONGO AND ITS PEOPLE. GRAB A COPY AND FIND OUT HOW IT AFFECTS THEIR LIVES IN THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE. WHAT A GREAT READ.
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Summary: An absolutely enthralling read
Review: This book had been recommended to me by so many friends that I began to suspect a conspiracy. Now I thank them all. I have read many books on travels in Africa, but none rival The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver weaves an intricate quilt that overlaps politics, religion, personal sacrifice, and a test of wills. I was getting ready for a New Year's Eve party and was late because I kept taking breaks to read more of the book! I inhaled the last two-thirds of it all in one day because I could not put it down. Kingsolver's talent enraptures you as you are pulled in by the intricacy of each character, while realizing the relative commonality of the Price family's struggle. As a recovering Catholic, I particularly appreciated the delicate way in which she challenges the tenets of Christianity. This a work of fiction that is so rooted in actual fact, it not only becomes completely believable, but it haunts your thinking. Escape to this reality-based entertainment and you will not regret it.
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Summary: Foget Conrad, This is the Novel the Congo Deserves
Review: This is a truly precious book. It is best example since "To Kill a Mockingbird" of an important literary novel that is a heart-stopping pageturner. THE POISONWOOD BIBLE delivers the most intriguing, real and moving accounts of the Congo ever pun into print. While Conrad chased big metaphors in central Africa, Kingsolver finds just as much poetry and philosophy in the way the women tend their manoic fields.This book succeeds in totally removing the cloak of darkness from the Congo without denying it can be a most unforgiving place with parasites and worms for every part of the body, crocodiles ready to crash river baptisms and armies of ants capable of destroying whole villages. Despite all the 'horror' I felt, I came away from this book with same feeling as Orleana Price, the wife of Baptist missionary Nathan Price who drags his family to the Congo on the eve of the country's independence from Belgian rule: I was haunted by the Congo's beauty, moved by its spirituality and enamored of its people. The story is told by the four daughters of Nathan Price. There is the oldest, Rachel, a shallow teeny bopper who is sixteen going on twenty-five and speaks in commercial lingo and hilarious malapropisms that were a little too hilarious for my taste. There is Ruth, a precocious five-year-old who often misunderstands things with great clarity. Finally are the genius twins, Leah, a tomboy who identifies most with Dad the pulpit-pounder and Adah, who suffers from the crippling effects of being nearly smoothered by her twin sister in the womb. Adah is bit like Vladamir Nabakov reincarnated as a 13-year old girl. She is brilliant, dark and reads backwards and forwards. Great stuff. But, to be honest, I felt the book was a bit cartoonish at times. Nathan Price is absent for most of the book, off doing God's work, returning only to commit one more outrageous and contrived faux paus or slap a daughter for disrespect. Kingsolver makes no real attempt to understand him or explain what would make a man endanger the welfare of his family by nearly starving them to death in the middle of Africa with no money and support. She mentions a traumatic event in the war, but I was not convinced. The book also, at times, had a PERILS OF PAULINE feel to it as I read with one eye, not wanting to be told of yet another horror of the Congo being visited upon the girls. But no book is perfect. At least no book worth reading. And this book gives you at least double your money's worth. The West, American included, has done unspeakable things in the Congo, as this book makes abundantly clear. That can never be changed and no book can begin to wash away all that blood and suffering and injustice. But a book, a very special book, can serve in its own small way as a kind of truth and reconcilliation committee. This is such a book and Kingsolver has earned my deepest respect for writing it.
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Summary: An Excellent Read
Review: I had pre-conceived ideas about this book which turned out to be completely wrong. This is a wonderfully crafted story which got better and better as it unfolded. When Nathan takes his wife and four daughters to the Congo in the late 1950s to undertake missionary work, they have no real comprehension of what is in store for them. There are some obvious obstacles that confront them and many that they cannot have envisioned. After a major event occurs (which should not be revealed until the reader reaches that stage of the book), their family structure and future drastically changes and for me this heralded the most fascinating part of the book. A great deal of cross-analysis with the Bible can be made, but don't let that deter you. Even without a detailed knowledge of the Bible, the reader can still thoroughly enjoy this book and gain a great deal from it. Having enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible so much, I will go on to Barbara Kingsolver's other works without hesitation.
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Summary: Great Book, Better Ending
Review: This book is so amazing. I could not recommend this book enough. Everyone in my house has read it, and everyone has cried, laughed, and felt for the family within the story. I absolutely love this book.
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Summary: A family's journey into its own wilderness
Review: Kingsolver's most powerful and memorable book to date, THE POISONWOOD BIBLE is multi-faceted: intricate layers become a pattern of endurance and survival in a harsh and demanding land. The missionary family of parents and four daughters undertake to bring their Christian message to the Congo. A land that demands respect, Africa is nothing they could ever have imagined. The father becomes ever more rigid in his beliefs, while the mother and daughters attempt to adjust to this environment and learn from it. The story is told primarily from the viewpoints of the four daughters as the inevitable tragedy unfolds, leaving the family stunned in its aftermath, as their time in Africa changes their lives forever. This tale is an indictment of the missionary hubris that disrespected generations grounded in their own history, the belief that the missionaries could bring "The Word" to "savages". The brutality of everyday existence is juxtaposed with the incomparable beauty of nature and the stunning images of Kingsolver's phrasing: "As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water". The only view we aren't told is Nathan's, he of the implacable judgment, stripped hard as stone by his belief in a righteous and angry God, one with no mercy. Nathan is ultimately destroyed by the blind faith of his beliefs, making idolatry of the very Word he wears like a crown, distorting truth to his own ego-driven ambition: the death of the spiritual self in the aggrandizement of ritual. In the end, "Africa swallowed the conqueror's music and sang a new song of her own".
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Summary: First of many Kingsolver
Review: This is the first book I have read by Barbara Kingsolver *BUT* plan on reading others.
I found this book difficult to get into in the beginning of the book. As time went on and I continued reading the book did grab me and I found the story very interesting.
Nathan Price, takes his wife and four daughters to Africa to be missionaries. The book explains all that they went through while in Africa and how it came about that some of the family left and left family members behind. The book is wrote by Mrs. Price and the four daughters. Can be a real page turner once you get into the story.
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Summary: Engaging
Review: After reading several fairly interesting but lightweight books, I longed for something engaging. Did I ever get that in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. During work, it would call to me, and I would find myself slipping off to read "just a little bit." At night, I would force my eyes open so that I could read "just a little bit more." This one is totally absorbing. A fanatical Free-Will Baptist minister (too fanatical for his own religion, it turns out) takes his wife and four daughters to the Congo to save the natives. The story is told from the point of view of each of the female members of the family, primarily through the voices of the daughters. Each daughter has her own distinct voice and point of view so that the story unfolds and wraps around you like the native women readjust their pagne. Covering a time from 1959 to 1983, we see the disintegration and restructuring of a family while the Congo goes through a similar process. Although never beaten over the head with the details, we are being educated in a way of life not our own both in the family and in Africa. What more can you ask of a book but to be absorbingly well written and thought provoking too?
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Summary: Quite simply her best
Review: No question, this is Barbara Kingsolver's best effort to date, and that's saying a lot. A fantastic writer, capable of transporting the reader into her rich and carefully detailed worlds. I'd give this one 6 stars if I could.
Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: I was very impressed with this book. Not only was it a wonderful story that allowed me to identify with the characters, but it left me questioning my own ideas and philosophies on life. The characters are very dynamic, and the different chapters are written form the varied perspectives of the 5 female members of the family. My favorite character was Adah, both gifted and disabled, who does not speak and sees the world from a "backwards" perspective. It seems like the kind of book that I will reread someday and enjoy and understand it more.
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