Name: The poisonwood Bible
Rating: 3.950980392156863 (255 reviews)
ISBN: 0783884672

Barbara Kingsolver

The poisonwood Bible

Abigail F

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

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

The Poisonwood Bible

Amanda Wright

Me and Barbara Kingsolver just do not get along but this was really great! It took me forever to get through but it took those gals so long to get out of Kilanga so it all evens out. I really enjoyed the ending and how much growth the daighters got to enjoy away from each other. I loved anytime we heard from Orelanna. I loved that we didn’t really get much of Reverend Price. I think I just don’t love Kingsolver’s prose that much.

Eli Alvah Huckabee

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Jaymie Lemke

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

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.

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.

The poisonwood Bible

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