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The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel, by Barbara Kingsolver
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The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
- Sales Rank: #4721 in Books
- Brand: Kingsolver, Barbara
- Published on: 2008-06-10
- Released on: 2008-06-10
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.44" w x 5.50" l, 1.16 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 576 pages
Amazon.com Review
Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 2000: As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?
In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member's fortune across a span of more than 30 years.
The Poisonwood Bible is arguably Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and it reveals both her great strengths and her weaknesses. As Nathan Price's wife and daughters tell their stories in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenage Rachel's tendency towards precious malapropisms is particularly annoying (students practice their "French congregations"; Nathan's refusal to take his family home is a "tapestry of justice"). More problematic is Kingsolver's tendency to wear her politics on her sleeve; this is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, in which she uses her characters as mouthpieces to explicate the complicated and tragic history of the Belgian Congo.
Despite these weaknesses, Kingsolver's fully realized, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the first half, when Nathan Price is still at the center of the action. And in her treatment of Africa and the Africans she is at her best, exhibiting the acute perception, moral engagement, and lyrical prose that have made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber
From Publishers Weekly
In this risky but resoundingly successful novel, Kingsolver leaves the Southwest, the setting of most of her work (The Bean Trees; Animal Dreams) and follows an evangelical Baptist minister's family to the Congo in the late 1950s, entwining their fate with that of the country during three turbulent decades. Nathan Price's determination to convert the natives of the Congo to Christianity is, we gradually discover, both foolhardy and dangerous, unsanctioned by the church administration and doomed from the start by Nathan's self-righteousness. Fanatic and sanctimonious, Nathan is a domestic monster, too, a physically and emotionally abusive, misogynistic husband and father. He refuses to understand how his obsession with river baptism affronts the traditions of the villagers of Kalinga, and his stubborn concept of religious rectitude brings misery and destruction to all. Cleverly, Kingsolver never brings us inside Nathan's head but instead unfolds the tragic story of the Price family through the alternating points of view of Orleanna Price and her four daughters. Cast with her young children into primitive conditions but trained to be obedient to her husband, Orleanna is powerless to mitigate their situation. Meanwhile, each of the four Price daughters reveals herself through first-person narration, and their rich and clearly differentiated self-portraits are small triumphs. Rachel, the eldest, is a self-absorbed teenager who will never outgrow her selfish view of the world or her tendency to commit hilarious malapropisms. Twins Leah and Adah are gifted intellectually but are physically and emotionally separated by Adah's birth injury, which has rendered her hemiplagic. Leah adores her father; Adah, who does not speak, is a shrewd observer of his monumental ego. The musings of five- year-old Ruth May reflect a child's humorous misunderstanding of the exotic world to which she has been transported. By revealing the story through the female victims of Reverend Price's hubris, Kingsolver also charts their maturation as they confront or evade moral and existential issues and, at great cost, accrue wisdom in the crucible of an alien land. It is through their eyes that we come to experience the life of the villagers in an isolated community and the particular ways in which American and African cultures collide. As the girls become acquainted with the villagers, especially the young teacher Anatole, they begin to understand the political situation in the Congo: the brutality of Belgian rule, the nascent nationalism briefly fulfilled in the election of the short-lived Patrice Lumumba government, and the secret involvement of the Eisenhower administration in Lumumba's assassination and the installation of the villainous dictator Mobutu. In the end, Kingsolver delivers a compelling family saga, a sobering picture of the horrors of fanatic fundamentalism and an insightful view of an exploited country crushed by the heel of colonialism and then ruthlessly manipulated by a bastion of democracy. The book is also a marvelous mix of trenchant character portrayal, unflagging narrative thrust and authoritative background detail. The disastrous outcome of the forceful imposition of Christian theology on indigenous natural faith gives the novel its pervasive irony; but humor is pervasive, too, artfully integrated into the children's misapprehensions of their world; and suspense rises inexorably as the Price family's peril and that of the newly independent country of Zaire intersect. Kingsolver moves into new moral terrain in this powerful, convincing and emotionally resonant novel. Agent, Frances Goldin; BOMC selection; major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
It's been five years since Kingsolver's last novel (Pigs in Heaven, LJ 6/15/93), and she has used her time well. This intense family drama is set in an Africa on the verge of independence and upheaval. In 1959, evangelical preacher Nathan Price moves his wife and four daughters from Georgia to a village in the Belgian Congo, later Zaire. Their dysfunction and cultural arrogance proves disastrous as the family is nearly destroyed by war, Nathan's tyranny, and Africa itself. Told in the voices of the mother and daughters, the novel spans 30 years as the women seek to understand each other and the continent that tore them apart. Kingsolver has a keen understanding of the inevitable, often violent clashes between white and indigenous cultures, yet she lets the women tell their own stories without being judgmental. An excellent novel that was worth the wait and will win the author new fans.
-?Ellen Flexman, Indianapolis-Marion Cty.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Got more Educated on African History Than I was Expecting, for Sure.
By Amazon Customer
Slow start, and seemed to have varying degrees of pacing/holding-interest for me. Felt it was primarily written with the agenda of chastising the white world for messing with Africa, and for having the silly notion that they could just waltz in and fix these "backwards" people and their unevolved way of life (the father epitomized this. I agree it was a silly notion, and I agree with the author's supposition of "who were the white people to define a backwards vs. a correct manner of living). I've enjoyed some of Kingsolver's previous novels, and learned a lot from reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but maybe this time I wasn't in the mood to be lectured, and was first seeking entertainment. Five person/first person point of view was a bit confusing at first, and had to occasionally flip back to the beginning of the chapter to see who was speaking, and she gave subtle hints at first to help with that. My wife said she didn't care for so many POV's, and thought there wasn't enough distinction in each voice, but she was less than a quarter of the way through the book when I asked her about it. I liked it more as the story went on.
I also saw how she was trying to show a variety of reactions to the Africa experience, and especially enjoyed Rachel's.
Overall, I mostly enjoy Kingsolver's creativity, just felt this book was a bit drawn out and agenda-oriented.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
If you're interested in African history, read this novel
By patrick e bates
"The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
I just don't know how to review this novel. Yes, I read the whole thing, but I can't say, as I usually do, that it was entertaining. I don't think "entertaining" is the right word for it. Enlightening? Inspiring? Historically correct without being a boring history book? Yes, yes, yes, but...
I didn't fully appreciate this novel until I was very close to the end. Yes, I read it all, and yes I enjoyed reading it, but it was not like my usual novels. This was a deep story, a story that required some thinking and pondering and questioning and self-analysis.
If you have any interest in the history and cultural/social happenings in central African nations, then you should read this novel. Again, it's not so much historical as it is a story about the people and social culture of the regions. But it's sure not boring in that regard.
You'll notice I gave the story a 4-star rating, but it was better than that. 4.5 stars, 4.6 stars? Yeah, maybe, but not a full 5 stars. And that's only because it wasn't what I would term "entertaining".
You should read this novel, and if you haven't read "The Bean Tree", then read it, too.
Patrick
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Beautiful but Problematic
By BT Invictus
The Poisonwood Bible's setting is mesmerizing, its characters are compelling, its plot is suspenseful, and its historical backdrop is impressive. I often find stories told through multiple narrators to be deeply unsatisfying, but not here. Each of the five characters' voices is distinct from the others and very believable throughout most of the novel. Her chosen mode of narration is not just a postmodern gimmick - the five voices really do offer a richer and more robust view of the book's reality. For example, the observations of the shallow and nosy Rachel tend to advance the plot, while those of the more thoughtful narrators serve to develop the characters. The novel is expertly crafted and nearly perfect.
If I were to rate just the first two thirds of the novel, I wouldn't hesitate to be generous with all five stars. Near its conclusion, however, the book takes on an explicitly more political and ideological timbre that diminished the novel's narrative force for me. The story loses its momentum, the characters lose their nuance, and the themes lose their power, and everything feels manipulated for the sake of an agenda. As the novel approaches its resolution, it struck me that, if I were to rip the creative curtain away from her more "englightened" characters (that is, Leah, Adah, Anatole and Brother Fowles), I would find Barbara Kingsolver there, cowering wide-eyed like the exposed Wizard of Oz. Of course a novel can't help but present some kind of worldview through its characters and what happens to them, but this felt too obvious, as though she were trying too hard. There were times when I agreed with the book's ideology and other times when I questioned it, if only because it often had the dogmatic ring of Nathan Price himself, a sort of sad irony, I suppose. I guess I wished Kingsolver had decided to write an essay on her political views, leaving the novel to speak for itself. Or, at least I wish she had been a bit more subtle so as to make us read between the lines a little to figure out what she thinks. I think Things Fall Apart, a book that influenced Kingsolver's writing of The Poisonwood Bible, does a much better job of this. The result is a powerful novel that impacts its readers in a way that a thinly veiled ideological rant cannot.
I also found it a shame that Nathan Price has to bear the burden of representation for all Christians who take the Bible seriously. There are Christians and there a Christians - a quote that is repeated throughout the novel. What is meant by this, of course, is that there are Nathan Prices and there are Brother Fowleses, and sadly, neither one is an accurate representation of historic Protestantism. Nathan Price is a hateful, bigoted, misogynistic man who, in no way, embodies the spirit of the Christian message, neither in practice nor theology. His statement to his daughter "There will always be room for the righteous [in heaven]" betrays his belief in works-based righteousness, which is completely antithetical to the Gospel message and always has been. He believes that baptism alone brings about salvation, a very Catholic belief and not a Protestant one. He shuns sexual union with his wife, seeing it as some kind of sin. When the English Puritans, who celebrated marital intimacy and admonished those in their day who considered it sinful, have reason to call you a prude, you know something is up. And, yet, this is a man who is held up as one who zealously pursues biblical doctrine, a man who tries to live out the Bible's truth claims. I suspect that Kingsolver thinks this man is the living embodiment of the Bible's teachings. I honestly don't know where this guy's doctrine comes from.
Well, perhaps Brother Fowles is Kingsolver's attempt to be fair to Christianity. (It's obvious this is what she is trying to do here). After all, Brother Fowles is a more loving and accepting kind of Christian, so Christians are not all that bad, right? The problem is that he's a pantheistic, nature-worshipping pluralist who is very skeptical of the Bible's accuracy and authority. (Of course, his go-to passages were not tampered with by manuscript copiers and Bible translators; in theological arguments with Nathan Price, he can cite his favorite passages with confidence!) Although Brother Fowles is certainly more admirable and likable than Nathan Price, his theology is, likewise, not at all representative of historic Christianity in any meaningful sense. The novel seems to suggest that the logical extension of inerrancy and orthodoxy is Nathan Price, and that the only way a Christian can truly become a loving and accepting person is to abandon the faith's core tenets all together. We see this clearly with Leah Price as well. What a sad and untrue picture, and yet, that is the one the book presents.
This troubled me, and I found that even the novel's beauty could not make this bitter pill easier to swallow. In an author's note at the end of my edition of the book, Kingsolver responds somewhat defensively to those who take umbrage at the way she represents Christians in the novel, so I guess that would include me. "[The Poisonwood Bible] aroused ire in a few people who don't understand the symbolic nature of literature and presume that a Christian missionary character who behaves badly in a novel is somehow proof of the author's anti-Christian sentiments. If these people read more novels they would figure out that Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not evidence that Mr. Stevenson hated physicians." For the sake of my own sanity, I'm not going to dwell on her assertion that anyone who finds himself irked by her portrayal of Christians is necessarily a dullard who needs to read more. I also won't elaborate as to why quotes likes these make me want to abandon authorial intention all-together and join the New Critics. Instead, I'll stick to my point: I'm not so much accusing her of having anti-Christian sentiments, but rather of misunderstanding Christianity all-together, of calling it something that it is not, of using a Christian straw man to demonstrate why Christianity has no value and no meaning outside of Western culture. The least she can do is evaluate Christianity on its own merits, given that her book seems to suggest that Christian doctrine and African culture will inevitably breed misunderstanding and tragedy. Again, I'll commend Achebe for his nuanced and more realistic portrayal of Christian missionaries in his novel. He captures the good, the bad and the ugly. And the result is complex, three-dimensional characters and a far more compelling narrative.
I certainly refuse to throw this book out with its ideological bathwater. It's beautifully written and has much to offer readers. I can honestly say that I enjoyed reading it. It's just not the perfect novel I was hoping it would be.
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