 |
 |
Sign in/joinLanguage: English [ others ]
Over forty million books on members' bookshelves.
|
Loading... The Poisonwood Bibleby Barbara Kingsolver
LibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendations
Loading...
won't like
will probably not like
will probably like
will like
will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Nathan Price, a Baptist missionary, moves his wife and four daughters to the Belgian Congo in 1966. Each of these family members is changed in remarkable ways by this experience. This novel is extraordinary for its realistic portrayal of flawed human characters. Each of the women in the book takes her turn telling her part of the story. This shifting point of view provides valuable information about each character, shading them in effective ways. The strong characterization helps to soften Kingsolver’s underlying thematic dogma and keeps the story rooted in the real emotions of real people. The novel examines the role of imperialism and the effect of religious fundamentalism. It also discusses patriarchy and relates the personal—a family—to the political—the continent of Africa. However, the richly drawn characters and fascinating plot conflicts keep the tale from devolving into a polemic. (  )gkuhns | Jul 8, 2009 |   This took me quite a while to read, but I wanted to make sure I took it all in. I had to re-read much of it, not because I didn't enjoy it, but because my concentration levels aren't that great at the moment. Wonderful story and characters and the description of life in the Congo was very rich. It was a very interesting story and the characters were all so different, but all very strong. Highly recommended reading! (  )Fluffyblue | Jul 7, 2009 | This is the sort of book that, when I finish, I put down and just stare into space for a while. I'm contemplating: "what does this mean for my life?" The emotional impact is powerful and undeniable, but the specific implications for me and my relationships are left to me to sort out. It's probably because I'm not exactly an intellectual giant, but I found it hard to understand what the last chapter was saying - so maybe it was trying to be more optimistic than I found it to be. My emotional response was one of profound depression: about the people of Africa, about what men can do to their families, about the hope of recovery from past traumas. When I first heard about this book I thought I'd find its African setting to be too distant from my comfortable middle class urban existence for me to really relate. However, this wasn't the case at all. Indeed, I think maybe this is one of the points of the novel - that I am an oppressor (as a white, male) regardless of my personal role. But there's so much more than that in this book....the arbitrary nature of life and death; trauma and recovery; wrong and forgiveness; predestination and the power to change - you name it. And that's not to mention the specifics of American-African politics. It's a longish book by my standards, but I never felt that it was dragging on. There's no wasted words, and the reading hours have been a great addition to my life. ( )oldblack | Jun 30, 2009 | 1  In alternating first-person narratives, missionary wife Orleanna Price and her daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May, tell the story of their family's time in the Congo during its bid for independence in 1960. Each narrator has a unique voice and point of view. The prose is lovely, even while the story is ominous from the beginning and deals with themes of guilt and responsibility. Though the political commentary is a little heavy-handed near the end, the layered narration and expert touch with thematic content make this a good choice for a book club or class discussion, whether or not you agree with the author's persuasion. A challenging, thought-provoking story. ( )bell7 | Jun 24, 2009 | 1 Read it, then do some research on the history of the Congo and Africa in general (there is a bibliography in the book but probably not much of it available to the average reader). She is a fine writer, and she makes you think. (  )bjgoff689 | Jun 3, 2009 | 0.103 seconds to build listing 
 Although ''The Poisonwood Bible'' takes place in the former Belgian Congo and begins in 1959 and ends in the 1990's, Barbara Kingsolver's powerful new book is actually an old-fashioned 19th-century novel, a Hawthornian tale of sin and redemption and the ''dark necessity'' of history.
Amazon.com (ISBN 0060786507, Paperback)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 (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
Abebooks |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
