On one hand, there is nothing new here, and on this same old tirade, I disagree strongly with the author. Examples:* Relativism. I'm sorry, I believe infanticide to be wrong for all cultures, for all times.* Missionaries, particularly protestant missionaries to Africa were entirely the endeavor of egotistic, abusive, colonialists who were merely out to change Africa into either a western society or an exploitative factory for western society. Wrong again, read Tom Hiney's "On the Missionary Trai...

In late 1950s Congo, an American missionary arrives with his family intent on bringing enlightenment to the savages. The experiences of the family are told by the preacher’s wife, Orleanna, and their four daughters, the vain Rachel, twins Leah, who is devoted to her father, and Adah, damaged at birth but more aware than anyone realizes, and the baby, Ruth Ann. The events take place during a period when Congo was eager to cast off its colonial chains and we see some details of events of the time....

There's plenty of Goodreads reviewers who felt differently, but I found The Poisonwood Bible to be a very strong and very different piece of historical fiction. It's a slower story than I normally like, something you might want to consider before deciding whether to try this 600+ page exploration of colonialism, postcolonialism and postcolonial attitudes, but I very much enjoyed this incredibly detailed portrait of a family and a society set in the Belgian Congo of 1959. And I, unlike some other...

I read this over a two day span in college when I was home for winter break. We had a power outage so I found the sunniest room in the house and read all day. Although I prefer Kingsolver's works about the American southwest, this remains one of the most fascinating books I have ever read.

I had a hard time choosing between 2 and 3 stars -- really, it should be 2.5. I thought the prose was quite lovely; Kingsolver has a nice voice. I enjoyed reading about a part of the world of which I have no experience. The description of the clash of cultures was well done. However. The author had an agenda and she really didn't mind continually slapping us in the face with it. Now, I don't pretend the US hasn't made mistakes and won't continue on making mistakes. But to equate one group of peo...

Reviewing in the face of the great billows of love projected towards this novel is a hapless task, your hat blows off and your eyes get all teary and if you say one wrong thing small children run out of nowhere and stone you or just bite your calves. So I shall this one time sheathe my acid quill. But I can't resist just a couple of little points though -1) you have to suspend great balefuls of disbelief. These kids, they're awfully highfalutin with their fancy flora and fauna and fitful forensi...

5 epic, no wonder this book is so well-loved stars, to The Poisonwood Bible! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Review of the audio. 🎧 The Price family, including minister father, Nathan, mother, Orleanna, and four daughters, traveled to the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s to serve a Baptist mission. The mom and daughters are the narrators, and I enjoyed the audio narrator’s voices for each of the characters (even her southern accent wasn’t too off the mark!). I do have to warn for audio fans, there were so many ch...

The Poisonwood Bible covers a cataclysmic period in the life of the Price family of Bethlehem, Georgia.Nathan Price, a Baptist preacher takes his wife and three daughters deep into the jungle of the Belgian Congo to spread the word of god. His unswerving path is clear, unarguable and dictated directly from above. He is driven, single minded and stubborn. However, we soon begin to suspect that Nathan will find it hard to save or convince anybody ....... including his family!His long suffering wif...

“The forest eats itself and lives forever.” Image: “The Trees Have Eyes” by Angela WrightThere is magic in these pages. Not the supernatural kind. Not the magical-realism kind. But magic of language and of the TARDIS kind: by some strange sorcery, many huge themes are thoroughly but lightly explored in single volume that is beautiful, harrowing, exciting, tender, occasionally humorous, and very approachable.“We messengers of goodwill adrift in a sea of mistaken intentions.”Freedom and Forgivenes...

My official review "Tata Jesus is Bängala":I finished the last 300 pages in 2 days (which is very fast for me - English books). I felt every emotion under the sky with this book. I hated Nathan Price, I hated injustice, I hated my uselessness, I hated the fact that there are no good prospects for Africa in the future. As a Geographic major I strongly believe that the closer you are to the Equator, the longer it will remain an underdeveloped country. Of course the country itself is full of resour...

RACHELI am the oldest sister and a typical teenage girl, oh-jeez-oh-man. All I want is to go back to Georgia and kiss boys outside the soda bar, but instead here I am stuck in the Congo with unconditioned hair and ants and caterpillars and scary-but-with-a-heart-of-gold black people. Jeez Louise, the life of a missionary's daughter. Also I make a whole lot of hilarious Malabarisms, that's just one of the tenants of my faith. There's two of them now! Man oh man.LEAHThe other day, Anatole rushed i...

Avoidable Self-AbuseWomen put up with a great deal from men. This is a truism which can’t be reinforced too frequently, if only to remind women that they often collaborate with masculine arrogance to their own - and the world’s - disadvantage. Getting out from under, as it were, requires hitting them where it hurts - not in the private parts but in the intimacies of family life. Essentially, men have no defense against feminine dismissal of their pretensions as merely foolish.Most of the common

Religious devotion many times leads to fanaticism which kills the family unit. This happens everyday--here is a chronicle of this. This diluted (& superscary-in-a-different-way) version of "The Shining" is complex, emotional. It is written similarly to "The Joy Luck Club", in different vignettes all of which are articulated in a distinguished, feminine P.O.V.The location is the Congo before and after independence--the plot is about a preacher who treks to the jungle with his family. We end up ca...

People love this book, and I think I understand why. It's got a collection of strong characters, each chapter is written from a different character's point of view, and it's set in Africa, which is exciting. But there are a few reasons I don't think it's great literature. The main things I expect from a good novel are: a) that the writer doesn't manipulate her characters for her agenda, b) that the characters' actions are consistent to the world the writer has created for them, c) good, tight pr...

Riveting...We read this aloud at home and I found it to be beautifully and movingly written, by turns charming and horrifying. Her articulation of the most subtle nuances of experience, the profoundly different narrative voices she assumes like an experienced character actress, and the way she fluently plays with language, show Kingsolver's love and mastery of her craft.Having been brought up by ultra-religious Christian parents myself, I found the children's and wife's experience strongly reson...

This one took me a long time to read, not just because it has a lot of pages but also because I had to read every single word carefully and re read the best bits too! It is so beautifully written and so very evocative of the atmosphere of Africa. It is told in the five different voices of the female members of the family and I have to admit to liking Adah's chapters the most. She has a wonderful way of looking at things and I especially liked the way she referred to her bible thumping father as

A book that countless people told me to read, which I finally got round to doing. This is a provocative tale about the land that was once called Congo; the tale of a missionary and his family as told by his 4 daughters and wife over 40+ years the rise and fall and rise of the Price family. Very interesting in that I get to get a feel some of Africa's recent Colonial past albeit through European eyes. A book that definitely stayed with me after completion. 6 out of 122010 read

My introduction to the fiction of Barbara Kingsolver is The Poisonwood Bible, her 1998 novel that seems to be a staple of book clubs the world over, from Oprah's to the Dive Bar Book Club I've joined and which picked this as their August read. This book was an assignment and took me out of the rhythm I was in reading westerns, so that might have something to do with my crankiness and general disappointment of it in summary. Kingsolver immersed me in extraordinary description, materializing the d...

Accepting a book recommendation offered up by my fellow Equinox Book Challenge participant, I chose to explore another novel related to the struggles of a maturing African continent. Making their way to the Belgian Congo in 1959, Nathan Price, his wife, and four daughter are ready to commence their missionary work. Arriving with everything they feel they might need, the Prices begin their journey, armed with Jesus, as they are surrounded with the locals in a jungle community. However, early on d...

What is amazing about The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is the author’s voice. Kingsolver casts a spell with the language she uses to describe three decades in the collective lives of the Price family, beginning with their time as missionaries in the Belgian Congo. The structure is also a strength. The story is narrated by the mother and daughters of the Price family, each illustrating her perspective of the family chronicle as they experience what would become and what really began as