The Poisonwood Bible

Written by Barbara Kingsolver

543 pages

Published by HarperPerennial

Review by Richard Gould

Receives:

It is a reader's great disappointment when a long novel is not long enough. When I arrived at the end of The Poisonwood Bible, I found myself wishing that the story was not over and I was not through visiting this family that is unique in its adventures and still reminiscent of the dynamics of most families. Through breathing detail and attention to the emotional world that we inhabit in our private minds, we are compelled back into recent history in 1959, when American missionaries visited the African Congo to bring their western ideas without recognizing that the Congo was fighting for its very survival while struggling for freedom from Belgium and autonomy from other meddling nations, including the United States.

Barbara Kingsolver's strong sense of character and voice give individuality and poise to each of her five narrators. As the wife and daughters of an intense and unforgiving evangelical Baptist preacher, the Price women suffer the hardships of the African Congo, from the lack of western comforts to a night of fleeing from hoards of man-eating ants, and each woman handles the suffering in her own way. Through their lessons and their tragedies, the Price women learn to transcend their circumstances, and in the end, The Poisonwood Bible is a story of redemption.

Kingsolver masterfully weaves the facts of postcolonial Africa and the fiction of the story of the Price family into a satisfying tapestry of richly defined details and profound thoughts on family, race and religion. I am looking forward to seeing what comes next from this talented, insightful author.

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Richard Gould is the former editor-in-chief of The Maxwell Digest. In addition to being a contributor to The Copperfield Review, he is at work on a historical novel set around the American Revolution.