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Summary: Best Page-turner ever!
Review: I've read many good books over the years, but this one fascinated me more than anything I can think of--I hated to get to the last page! The perspectives of the four uniquely different daughters was delightful and poignant but always tinged with humor and irony. It was the unraveling of a family, but was so punctuated with army ants, teen angst and palindromes that I forgot to feel weighed down by the tragedy. I'll be recommending this book for years.
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Summary: Beautiful Imagery
Review: The description of this novel brings the reader into the heart of the Congo. You will fall in love with each of the characters and travel with them as the book progresses. This book is a must. It's a fabulous summer reading book.
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Summary: Remarkable history-- familial and colonial
Review: Every now and then I read a novel that, no matter whether the subject matter is tragic or comic, I just hate to see end. Usually it is a story of a diverse family and I become so absorbed in their lives that reaching the end is like being disowned, cast out no longer to be an intimate. This was true for The Poisonwood Bible. It is a peerless look at one family and how, basically, it grew, nay, flew apart caught in the torrent of one particularly turbulent time of modern history. The Prices are led by the zealot humorless missionary father into the heart of the Congo, 1960 just as the climax is reached of that country's colonization. Barbara Kingsolver makes familial and colonial politics interact and parallel each other. Tragedy is utterly inevitable; one only waits, in much pain, to learn its specifics. The tale is recounted through chapter to chapter alteration among the mother and four daughters. The voices are aptly distinctive from the cunning but willfully ignorant eldest, Rachel through the two gifted twins Leah and Adah (the latter of whom is idiosyncratic because of being born with apparent brain damage) to the youngest whose fearless and childish musings are no less insightful and revealing of that special time and unique place. The mother's parts of the narrative are mostly looking back from the 1990s and it is from these that the foreboding descent into tragedy becomes most evident. In the well crafted background is a tiny rainforest community of unthinkably poor and colonized tribes-people. Kingsolver avoids political correctness and preachiness in showing,, episode by episode, how the villagers' wisdom and spirituality so greatly exceeds the missionary's. This is a story of individual and family love. It is also wonderfully informative on the political economy of the Congo (and I am sure the truths are no less relevant in the post-Kabila era as they were in the time around the assassination of Patrice Lumumba (January 1961). Kingsolver is also a biologist and she uses her impressive knowledge of rainforest denizens to poetically teach about the natural ecology of this stunning but troubled piece of earth.
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Summary: Doesn't Live Up To The Hype
Review: I think a lot of people just assume that if Oprah recommended a book that it must be wonderful. I had heard so much about this particular book that once I finally got around to it, I was expecting an inspiring and enlightening story of strong women and a new insight into Africa. I found that it was none of these things. I thought that for most of the book the women were exceedingly weak. In the later half, I didn't find their lives believable in the least. I persevered to the end, but felt that Kingsolver didn't live up to her potential in this disappointingly long effort.
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Summary: Weak Beginnings
Review: While the book in its entirety is very good, the first couple of chapters do nothing to hook the reader. Through the first portion it appears as if there is no plot contained. I commend the thorough descriptions in the begining for it does help to clearly picture every character throughout the rest of the book. Poor start, extraordinary finish.
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Summary: Story of a Lifetime
Review: Barbara Kingsolver's book, The Poisonwood Bible, presented a story line much better than I ever expected. People had told me it was good, but they warned me it was long and may not be something I wanted to read in a month for school. I decided to read the first page and see if I got hooked or not...I got hooked. So I read this amazing book and loved it. Barbara Kingsolver did a beautiful job in creating a realistic plot of a crazed Vietnam War veteran/Free Will Baptist minister who drags his poor family to the Congo of Africa. This father, Nathan Price, shows the epitome of a male-dominated family of all women. The mother never has a chance to say anything and the daughters are assigned to copy 100 verses of the Bible if they do anything remotely "ungogly". I loved the story being told by each daughters' and mother's point of views. It provided a unique story of teenage girls growing up in Africa, giving the opportunity to see each girl's reaction to this foreign land and all the changes one encounters when all the everyday comforts are taken away. The girls were different in every aspect: Rachel being the "princess", Leah the wanna be daddy's girl, Adah the silent and limping twin of Leah, and Ruth May the baby. Adah was by far my favorite character because she chose what she wanted to do and how she would do it on her own. She read forwards and backwards because she "learned in a whole new way". She took the time and had the patience to listen and see things everyone else had missed. Nathan gave you a character you loved to hate. He was hung up on the past and wouldn't get over it. He ignored his family who constantly had to fight various diseases and were warned to go back to America several times. He feels he has to suffer because he didn't die with the rest of his troop in Vietnam. But basically he's just a punk. This book has become one of my favorites, for no particular reason at all. It was just a good book that ended with a great feeling.
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Summary: A book that breeds discussion
Review: The Poisonwood Bible was my first foray into the world of Barbara Kingsolver. I bought the book many moons ago, long before Oprah graced it with her ubiquitous sticker, and I started it twice without getting further than the first few chapters. I've talked to other readers since then, and the general consensus seems to be that the novel is indeed hard to begin. I did read it in its entirety on my third try, and am glad that I did. The story of the 4 daughters and mother who had Africa forced upon them by a missionary zealot father was a very interesting read, and I learned quite a bit about the political history of the Congo. The book is long, however, and the characters quite complex. It's definitely one that you'll keep turning over in your mind after completing it. The novel is written in chapters that are narrated by the five females in the family, and each of them has a very distinct voice, a tribute to Kingsolver's writing abilities. On the down note, I and many others in a book discussion I attended seemed to find Kingsolver a bit preachy in the later half of the book. The first half is definitely the highlight, when the girls are young and they live in the tiny village where their father, severely damaged by WWII, attempts to convert the inhabitants into Southern Baptists. Overall, the book is somewhat of a challenge to read, but rewarding. A recommendation, especially if you have someone to discuss it with after you've finished.
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Summary: Sisters in Africa,Mother May I
Review: As a parent of 3 distinctly different children, I found the voices of Rachel,Adah,Leah,and Ruth May captivating. I appreciated the attention to life's details that reminded me of childhood. This novel made me aware of my own ignorance of African political history and geography. Although a serious book about complicated topics, it had plenty of funny moments (cursing parrot, Bobbsey Twins in the snow envy, and big chief with glasses frames) I have enjoyed other Kingsolver novels more during the reading, but this one leaves a much deeper feeling of having been in another place, time and person.
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Summary: Africa is the star of this novel
Review: The Poisonwood Bible is at its best when the descriptive language brings Africa to life. The voices of Leah, Rachael, Adah, Ruth May and Orleanna are really the voices of Africa trying to survive the poverty, the weather extremes, the natural calamities,and the political,cultural,and religious turmoil that was the essence of the Congo in the Sixties. The imagery and detail that Kingsolver brings to this novel is amazing. Africa lives and becomes the real main character. Africa is the beautiful heroine who is at the core of this wonderful novel.
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Summary: This is not the best Kingsolver book
Review: Though the setting and the stories of a missionary family in Belgian Congo in the early 60s are fascinating, at some point, it starts to drag. Going back and forth between the mother and the daughters can be a little confusing especially since it seems that Kingsolver has used different "voices" for each of her characters. The evangelist, Nathan Price, the husband of Orleanna, father of Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May, is a man of contradictions ~~ enough to be exasperated with him and typical of a lot of missionaries who only seek God's glory in the wrong ways. Orleanna seems to be a hen-pecked wife but she in turns discovers her strength when she needed it the most. The daughters are interesting in their own way. My least favorite is Rachel for she never loses her spoilness and selfish ways. My favorite is Leah ~~ she didn't let anything stop her in the way of true love. Not even war, prison, hunger, broken dreams ~~ none of it stopped her from staying with her husband. Kingsolver is consistent in one thing ~~ she is a writer who describes the surroundings in which her characters find themselves in. And you can feel the tropical heat of the jungle, see the insects, animals, hear the call of the monkeys and feel the humidity sticking to your skin. If you have time to read, then this is the book to read in slow spurts. Sometimes, it's all too much to handle in one sitting or even one week, but the ending does come. When I came to the end of the book, I felt a sense of relief that I was finally done. It isn't her best book ~~ Prodigal Summer more than makes up for what she didn't do in this book!!
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