Rating: 
Summary: Excellent, Excellent,Excellent!
Review: This Novel was the best one that I've read all year! It has it all. It appeared to be researched very well...as it gave me such an awesome realization of another country. It also, brought to my mind that some people go too far with pushing their beliefs onto others. Entertaining, endearing, and fascinating. A must read for all!
Rating:
Summary: abridged NY Review
Review: The phrase ''heart of darkness'' occurs only once, as far as I can tell, in Barbara Kingsolver's haunting new novel, ''The Poisonwood Bible.'' When it does, it falls from the mouth of Orleanna Price, a Baptist missionary's wife who uses it to describe not the Belgian Congo, where she, her husband and their four daughters were posted in 1959, but the state of her marriage in those days and the condition of what she calls ''the country once known as Orleanna Wharton,'' wholly occupied back then by Nathan Price, aforesaid husband and man of God. Joseph Conrad's great novella flickers behind her use of that phrase, and yet it doesn't. Orleanna is not a quoting woman, and for the quoting man in the family, her strident husband, there can be only one source -- the Bible, unambiguous and entire, even in a land that demonstrates daily the suppleness of language. ''Tata Jesus is bangala!''he shouts during his African sermons. It never occurs to him that in Kikongo, a language in which meaning hangs on intonation, bangala may mean '''precious and dear,'' but it also means the poisonwood tree -- a virulent local plant -- when spoken in the flat accent of an American zealot. The Prices are Nathan and Orleanna and their daughters: Ruth May, the youngest; Rachel, the oldest, a pale blond Mrs. Malaprop of a teen-ager; and the twins, Leah and Adah. Both twins are gifted, but Adah suffers from hemiplegia, which leaves her limping and nearly speechless. The female members of the family narrate ''The Poisonwood Bible'' in turn. Orleanna does so in retrospect, from her later years on Sanderling Island, off the coast of Georgia. The girls, however, tell their story from the Congo as it happens, on the precipice of events, like an epistolary novel written from a place with no postal service and no hope of pen pals. Nathan Price narrates nothing. And yet his certitude -- and the literal-minded ferocity with which he expresses it -- is the altar around which these women arrange themselves. We already know his story, Kingsolver implies. Most of what we have always heard, she suggests, are stories told by men like him. ''The Poisonwood Bible'' thus belongs to the women, and it is a story about the loss of one faith and the discovery of another, for each woman according to her kind. As Adah, so bright, so willing to torque the mother tongue, puts it, ''One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires.'' The Congo permeates ''The Poisonwood Bible,'' and yet this is a novel that is just as much about America, a portrait, in absentia, of the nation that sent the Prices to save the souls of a people for whom it felt only contempt, people who already, in the words of a more experienced missionary, ''have a world of God's grace in their lives, along with a dose of hardship that can kill a person entirely.'' The Congolese are not savages who need saving, the Price women find, and there is nothing passive in their tolerance of missionaries. They take the Americans' message literally -- elections are good, Jesus too -- and expose its contradictions by holding an election in church to decide whether or not Jesus shall be the personal god of Kilanga. Jesus loses. And yet, for all its portraiture of place, its reflexive political vitriol, its passionate condemnation of Nathan Price, ''The Poisonwood Bible'' is ultimately a novel of character, a narrative shaped by keen-eyed women contemplating themselves and one another and a village whose familiarity it takes a tragedy to discover. Rachel is the epitome of America's material culture, a cunning, brainless girl who parodies television commercials and says of Eeben Axelroot, ''I'm willing to be a philanderist for peace, but a lady can only go so far where perspiration odor is concerned.'' Ruth May, the baby, is the innocent whose words betray the guilty; she is the catalyst that splits the Price family apart. ''The Poisonwood Bible'' turns on several axes, and one of them is Leah's struggle to rebalance herself morally when she finally realizes exactly who her father is. Once she had said, ''My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's foot soldiers, while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit.'' But when the armor fell, she saw that Nathan Price's ''blue eyes with their left-sided squint, weakened by the war, had a vacant look. His large reddish ears repelled me. My father was a simple, ugly man.'' All the Prices adapt to the Congo, in their way, but Adah and Leah are carried farthest in their adaptation. Rachel accomplishes this by not adapting at all. ''The way I see Africa,'' she says, ''you don't have to like it but you sure have to admit it's out there. You have your way of thinking and it has its, and never the train ye shall meet!'' For Adah, adaptation comes in the form of unforgiving self-discovery, the realization that ''even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious.''
Rating: 
Summary: Strong female characters, but unbalanced presentation
Review: Barbara, Barbara, for shame! If you are going to create the Devil incarnate and place him, with 5 female victims, in the midst of the Congolese jungle in the guise of a white Baptist minister, then the least you could do is let Nathan Price speak for himself. Instead, you filter all of our perceptions of this tortured and hateful man through the eyes of his wife--who no longer believes in him or his religion, but cannot leave until tragedy strikes--or his daughters. All too often children judge their parents with either too much forgiveness or too much harshness, and the latter is certainly the case here. Although I enjoyed "The Poisonwood Bible" and its depiction of native Africa very much, I can't help feeling robbed that you never let Nathan speak for himself. Oh, he quotes the Bible right and left, but you never let us see what inner changes have driven him to risk his family's life and health in Africa. Even worse, once tragedy has struck, you don't even let Nathan preach--all we hear are rumors passed from mouth to mouth until one of the girls passes them on to us. So, although I obviously liked the novel and although I probably would agree with most of the positive statements by other reviewers--thus the 4-star rating--I was disappointed in your lack of balance.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful work of ficton
Review: I though this book was great, the characters were descibed in vivid detail and i got to know all of them quickly. I also think it was interesting how he showed the different point of veiws of each girl in the family. Although some chapters did drag, it was still worth reading to the end, my favorite part was especially the haunting fate of one of the character, which left me shaking after i read it.
Rating:
Summary: The Middle is Worth Reading
Review: The whole idea of an American missionary family going to the Congo to save lost souls, only to put their own in danger, fascinated me. What really interested me was why would anybody feel compelled to do so? Was it out of a real zealousness for the Word of God or was it borderline fanaticism that made Nathan Price drag his family into the heart of Africa? This novel answers these questions using the voices of Nathan Price's wife and four daughters in a prose that is wonderful and mesmerizing. However, I had to be patient with this novel, because it took me 100 pages to get into it, and truly enjoy the language. Also, the ending was very anticlimatic, and I think this book could've ended 150 pages sooner. I did give it four stars because I really enjoyed the middle, and I believe that part is worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: I was truly meant to read this book. A woman I didn't even know pulled me by the arm in the store and told me if I enjoy reading Oprah book selections I just have to read this one. I stopped, picked it up, and bought it without even reading the cover. I thought, if this woman felt this strong about it then it couldn't be too bad. Well I have no idea who that woman was but "THANK YOU!" I found this book very hard to put down. I didn't have the feeling of being preached to like other reviewers felt nor did I even notice that there was a so-called political agenda. I felt pulled into the middle of this family and at times cheered for them and cried with them. It brought the Congo to me, and I am most certain that I would never in my life sought to learn about the Congo. The part where the ants invaded the village is the real turning point for me. That is what the story was all about in my opinion. I had to think about my child hood.... would my mother choose me or a younger sibling and then I had to think about my children...would I choose one over the other. I can't get the picture out of my mind. I had such a connection with each daughter and the mother. I found a little of myself in each of them. Read this book and read the emotion!
Rating: 
Summary: Fabulous language, too overt
Review: I had been told to expect this book to be slow to begin with and then become a "can't put down". I found the opposite. I immediately loved the langauge and the style of writing. I looked forward to returning to each daughter's story to get her perspective on events. It make me think about what progress and civilization are and whether one culture can determine what that is for another. And then, in the last third of the book, the author decided we just couldn't get the point without being hit in the head with a hammer. Many authors have attempted to educate westerners about the culture of others and the effect of outside interference and political policies, but they have done it in more subtle ways that really make you examine your beliefs and perspective. Does Ms. Kingsolver lack the skill or just the will? I did enjoy the writing enough to try another of her books, hopefully she'll give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I am intelligent enough to draw my own conclusions.
Rating:
Summary: The Poisonwood Bible
Review: If you're tired of murder, murder, murder...read this wonderful book full of new thoughts and ideas. I just loved it. I like books where you don't know where its going. A great book.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling and overwhelming
Review: I can't imagine a better discription of the life of a missionary family. This would never take place today, the women of today have gotten educated, and therefore more able to express what they want. This is a tremendous book! Highly recommend it to any age group.
Rating:
Summary: ...actually 4.5
Review: The two other Kingsolver books I read were easy reads and kept me interested so I picked up this book not expecting anything amazing. But, I was surprised. The characters and story were much more intricate and engrossing. The only complaint I have was the last 150 pages were basically unnecessary and drawn out. I feel the story should have ended much sooner after the climax. Of course I kept reading hoping for something more, but I walked away thinking mostly about the first 400 pages. The historical background is very interesting but, warning, it can be a very political book and if you do not pay attention it can seem very one sided.
|
