Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver's acclaimed international bestseller tells the story of an American missionary family in the Congo during a poignant chapter in African history. It spins the tale of the fierce evangelical Baptist, Nathan Price, who takes his wife and four daughters on a missionary journey into the heart of darkness of the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them to Africa all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to the King James Bible - is calamitously transformed on African soil. Told from the perspective of the five women, this is a compelling exploration of African history, religion, family, and the many paths to redemption. The Poisonwood Bible was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and was chosen as the best reading group novel ever at the Penguin/Orange Awards. It continues to be read and adored by millions worldwide.

The Poisonwood Bible

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. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

A Novel

Abigail F

What is the conqueror’s wife, if not a conquest herself?

narrator was good voice but I want it in print so I can turn back to pages and copy the pretty words I like and also see visually some of the things that were fun to hear but might be better to read. Perhaps maybe some could say it was a tad bit too long and it did drag a bit maybe at the end I was like whoa I got more hours left or whatever but at the end of the day I enjoyed getting the full arc of all the Price girls & also all their perspectives and voice andi will never be mad about getting to read(hear) more scrumptious prose 

Jules 

Enjoyed it overall but the last third or so felt simultaneously slow and rushed. I also couldn't believe that two of the sisters just got, no character development. One doomed by her white devil complex and the other just got to be racist, while Adah was out there carrying the whole story. 

Julia Rivera

a poignant and compelling immersion to 1960s Congo. it flips your whole worldview upside down and opens your eyes 

Daphne Li-Chen

Sarah Sammis

An okay book but not as captivating as other Kingsolver books I've read. I found it read better when I read each character's chapters in order first to make five shorter coherent stories rather than one disjointed epic. My favorite character of the group is Adah. She seems to have grown the most over the course of the book.

cora albers

If you want a book on how religious zealotry and western missionary arrogance can transform even God into poison, this gut punch of a book is for you. Kingsolver is 🔥 

April Tan

Laura Mauler

The writing made the characters so real to me that I just wanted to shout at them and shake them into seeing what the hell was really going on. This book made me furious, and I highly recommend it to all.

Andrew John Kinney

This is my favorite Barbara Kingsolver book. The older I get, the more bewildered and irritated I get by people who are unwilling to listen, like the father in the story. I am not naive enough to believe every person's opinion is equally valid, but I always stop to try to understand what experience informs the opinion of the person from whom I'm hearing it. I happen to know a couple of people (three actually) who were children of missionaries in Africa, and at least two of those took the requisite lessons from that experience that a) 1st World White Men don't necessarily know best, and b) that people struggling with their societies constraints, and the different constraints that their natural environment puts on them (tropical weather, tropical diseases) may have a different and better way of doing things than it is done in, for instance, Iowa. Kingsolver's writing is at its best here, I believe, but perhaps others familiar with her full oeuvre can weigh in.

a novel

The poisonwood Bible

altlovesbooks

This is a hard review for me to write. I can see many (many) people loved this book, and I absolutely see what they see. The writing is stunning, no question. The story, told from the points of view of each of the female members of the Price family as if in journal entries, really drove home to me how isolated and out of their element they all were. Each member was written differently, each with their own separate, distinct personalities, and it really all went together beautifully.

My hangup with the whole thing was twofold. First, the buildup to the actual climax of the story was excruciatingly slow. The author does her due diligence in making sure we're right there with the Price family, I just failed to really connect with their day-to-day problems. Even when the major events start happening (and really you could argue that there's only two or three of those), once the rubber hits the road so to speak, the story is basically over and you're left with a sizeable chunk of the book left as an epilogue of sorts. 

I also expected more inter-family drama. Spoilers ahoy: (view spoiler)[The author spends a large chunk of time setting up Mr. Price as the villain of sorts, and I surely expected more drama set up between him and the family. Ultimately, though, I'm left waiting for a shoe to drop that never quite hits the ground. The events that unfold are ultimately man vs. nature I'd argue, and Mr. Price is left as an afterthought. I felt sorely unfulfilled at the abrupt end to the Congo saga, and found the last 140 pages or so uninteresting as the Price family separates almost entirely. (hide spoiler)]

Maybe this book just isn't for me. I accept that. It wasn't bad (3 stars is my meh-I-finished) rating, but I also wouldn't read it again, I don't think. Another review here stated at the end, "too much table dressing and not enough meal for me", which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Nora 

Each character's personality fights to find their roots, their voices clear, but working to ground themselves in unforgiving African soil - flooded with flora to becoming cracked with thirst. For such a long book, it is a remarkably quick read. Not a word wasted, nor a description over extended. The precision of her writing allows the reader to jump in, she give the reader the respect of intelligence. Giving you questions and clues to the direction of the story, that you trust and are rewarded with being answered. The sort of book that you keep at your side too fill every free moment, until closing the last page with a content sigh.

As usual, BK creates a visceral sense of place that can only be achieved through months (years?) of research. You would have sworn she had been raised in the Congolese jungle in the 1960s. I learned so much about the heartbreaking history of the Congo, all while basking in Kingsolver’s unmatched prose – by reviewing my bookshelf, you can see she’s my favorite author. She tested my fandom by asking me to commit to over 600 pages and four narratives that ran across several decades. While it took me over a month, I couldn’t miss the chance to see this book through, and I’m so glad I did. 

Jacqui Spears

Michele

Kingsolver writes well. There is depth and absence in the relationships that is very tangible. Our loved ones can be elusive especially the parent-child relationship. It is mysterious, complex and so rich and at times so difficult. It is captured well here.

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, The Poisonwood Bible is the story of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

Sian Wadey

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

I was a little bit disappointed at the end of this book. It seems I spent the whole time warming up to them, but by the end of it I still wasn't sure if I liked them. The main characters are Leah, Rachel, Adah and Ruth May and they were all fairly one dimensional, particularly Rachel. It seemed over the span of forty years she didn't change from being the whiney teenager, whereas Leah went from following her father around to following Anatole around. Adah was the only one not to annoy me. I'm not a mother, but I would like to think that when things started going downhill I would have gotten my children out of there no matter what the cost. An added thing that I thought was missed was a chapter or two from Nathan Price. He was probably the most interesting character of the lot.
Overall, I thought it was well written, but by the end, I was bored.

Jaymie Lemke

Ok read. Glad to have read it and also to be done with it.

Jenni Pertuset

This was the selection of a book group I dropped out of. Though I hated the book group, I felt forever grateful that they'd introduced me to Barbara Kingsolver.

Nadine 

What a powerful book. I could relate so much to how Africa gets under your skin and never lets you down. It also gave so much insight into the deep cultural and understanding divide between the colonists and missionaries and the local inhabitants. And it's just brilliantly written.
An excellent companion to Congo, the Epic history of a People, by D. Van Reybrouck

Averi Hobbs

I had to read this as a summer reading assignment for my AP English class and it wasn't too bad of a novel. I loved the story being told from all the sisters points of view and how each of them handle their new lives differently.

Antonella Romani

To keep it simple, this book was AMAZING!!
Interesting from beginning to end, I dont think I have ever read a book of this length as fast as I did with this one. The writing style was so unique that it did prove a bit more difficut to read and follow than usual for me. Still, it had very powerful storytelling and vivid discriptions.
There ae sooo MANY themes tackled in this book, wrapped up in history told by the POV's of Mrs. Price and the 4 daughters, like colonialism, misogyny/role of women, culture, adaptation, survival, and war politics to name a few.
It does tend to have an "anti-christian" or "anti-missionary" tone, but I loved it regardless, and would HIGHLY reccomend it to just about anybody.

Dorian Avers

This is an important book. It is a story of a family who have gone to the Congo so that the father can preach the word of his God and "save" the Congolese. From the beginning you know that you're not rooting for this man and you feel apprehensive about the rest of his family. Nathan did not come to the Congo purely to help, he came for selfish reasons. He only wants to help those who will throw away their way of life and blindly follow him, and he refuses to listen to anyone else. I liked that this novel was not this big "white savior" story. The Price family struggles and it is the Kilanga villagers who subtly help them survive. 
 There are brief snippets of history that add so much depth to this story and disgust you at the same time. I had no idea about Belgium's dark history or how high functioning Africa was before others landed on it and decided that they needed to control it. As an American, I know that we are taught to look at Africa as a whole continent that has always needed saving. The skewed view through pictures and biased history we are taught in school is disgraceful and we must unlearn it as individuals. 
 My only big problem with this novel was that it kept going. This kept it from being one of my favorites. I do like that we got to see the girls grow up, especially how Kilanga changed some so drastically and how others still fell back into old ways and believed themselves above others, but it just kept jumping farther ahead. It feels like Kingsolver realized she had a great and powerful novel in her hands and she just wasn't ready to end it. I have a ton of () [] in the novel and will reread this someday.

Tanya Sutton

This book is easily one of my favorites. It's the story of a family that moves to the Congo to be missionaries to the Congolese people, and is told from the point of view of the mother and her four daughters. Even though the narration voice alternates between five people, the flow of the writing isn't choppy at all.

Trevor Berrett

Woah! Where did this book come from? It was amazing and does not seem precedented by Kingsolver's other work. 
This book is told in a series of first person accounts from the lives of five females living with one patriarchal male. Each has a unique personality and Kingsolver effortlessly evokes their distinct voice in her writing. This book is heartbreaking. Guilt runs from the first page to the last. 
This is definitely a book I recommend to anyone who likes reading. It will appeal to those with sort of uppity literary tastes as well as those who just like a good summer read.

Amber Laha

Halfway point, the whole thing started to seriously drag for me. I felt she could have been a little more snappy with the story, but either way it was interesting it just didn't have the hugest impact on me. I did really feel angry over what their father was doing and so blindly. Ignorance is our enemy even today.

Jeni Enjaian

This was a beautiful book, a beautiful but very sad book. In the description, this book is described as the story of a family falling apart yet coming back together again. I kept waiting for the coming back together. Instead, I saw increased fragmentation and sadness as all the members of the family drifted apart in the real hopelessness that comes from a life of abandoned faith.
In this book, Kingsolver brilliantly chronicles the life of a scarred, messed-up family that just happened to be centered around a move to Africa as "missionaries". Each character is well developed. The events that occur in the lives of each woman, mother and daughters, are realistic, heart-breaking, and told with understated elegance.
I do recommend this book for its overall impressive quality. However, do not expect joy or revelation to come at the end, unless it is the revelation of the best that can be hoped for in a life without God.

The Poisonwood Bible

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