|
|
 |
The Poisonwood Bible
By Barbara Kingsolver
[Buy this book]
Review by Ellen Isaacs
| Rating: +3 |
| -4 |
-3 |
-2 |
-1 |
0 |
+1 |
+2 |
+3 |
+4 |
|
This book takes place in the Congo in the 1960s, when the country was fighting for independence from Belgium. It centers around Nathan & Orleana Price and their four daughters, who go there from Atlanta to do missionary work. The story shows how Nathan, blinded by his mindless determination to force the villagers to adopt his ways, never gets a clue about the people and the culture he has transplanted himself into. At the same time, he completely misunderstands his own family, and refuses to leave when they come in danger. He's is completely out of touch, and each of the women in his family learn to adapt in different ways. But the book is more about the four daughters and how they grow from that world-changing first year in the Congo into adults.
Each chapter is written from the perspective of one of the four daughters or the mother, which I found an interesting and effective device to help us understand the characters, both through their own eyes and through each other's eyes. The characters themselves are interesting and very different from each other, and I enjoyed getting to know them. One is an insecure prima donna, another a liberal intellectual, another a brilliant girl who is paralyzed on half of her body, and the other a carefree child. However, at the same time, I felt somewhat removed from what was going on in the Congo, and had a hard time piecing together the political events that affected them so dramatically. Over the course of the book, it becomes more important to understand the external events, so I found that I lost a connection with the characters. In the last third of the book, we follow the characters through adulthood, and I found I didn't really understand the different choices they made as well as I would have liked. Although I still enjoyed their story, I didn't feel, as I had in Kingsolver's other books, a real connection with the characters in a way that affected me personally. This book felt more distant.
|
