Matt's Reviews > The Poisonwood Bible

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 during their time, the Price women tell of all the changes they could not have predicted while still in the comforts of their Bethlehem, Georgia home. While Nathan seeks to convert the Congolese population—still stuck on their own spirits and medicine men— with his evangelical Baptist ways, the others begin to see that nothing is as it seems. American staples are of no use to anyone in the Belgian Congo and the learning curve is as sharp as can be. With Belgium ready to hand over control of the country to the Congolese, a political vacuum develops, where foreigners are painted with a single brush. Both sides in the Cold War seek to create a new ally, elbowing their way in, hoping to develop 20th century quasi-colonial territory in Africa, more along ideological lines than those of traditional tribe or cultural brethren. One cannot miss that Congo is rife with natural resources that both the Americans and Soviets might like, though this remains a whispered or ne’er spoken fact. While the Price family soon learns that it will take more than the presence of the Holy Spirit to protect them in this foreign land, each has a struggle to better understand their surroundings and themselves, all in the hopes of completing their mission. Personal growth and grief arrive in equal measure, leaving everyone to reassess their role in the Congo, as political and social stability disintegrates with each passing day. As the novel progresses, the Price girls mature into women, using their Congolese experiences to shape their adult lives, forever altered by what they have experienced. An interesting novel that pushes some of the limits of understanding from a missionary perspective, Kingsolver pulls no punches and lays out her agenda throughout. I’d surely recommend this novel to those who seek to explore an interesting journey through the jungles of Africa, prepared to digest and synthesise symbolism of the highest order and non-Western sets of beliefs.

While I have heard of this novel over the years, I never felt drawn to read it. Admittedly, I knew nothing of it and perhaps judged the book by its title—the lesser of the two evil things avid book readers with literary blinders tend to do—and chose to mentally shelve it. After reading two novels about the horrors of South Africa under the system of apartheid, I was ready for something new, but still on the continent. Learning that Kingsolver set this book in Africa, I wondered if it might complement some of the topics about which I had recently read, while also offering me something with a little less political frustration. Kingsolver presents an all-consuming novel that pushes the limits through the eyes of an American family, at times offering the presumptive ignorance of missionaries while also exploring massive clashes in cultural differences between the Western world and African villages. Kingsolver creates a wonderful core of characters, primarily the Price family, allowing her to paint dichotomous pictures of the proper way to live. Using various narratives led by all five women in the family, the reader is able to see the Belgian Congo/Congo/Zaire through different eyes. Backstories are plentiful, as are the character flaws that each possess, but all five are also keen to interpret their familial head—Pastor Nathan Price—with their own biases. This surely enriches the larger story as well as permitting the reader to feel a closer connection to all those who play a central role in the story’s progress. Kingsolver weighs in, both bluntly and in a wonderfully subtle manner, about the role of imperialism in African countries, which later led to a political game of Cold War chess and bloodshed to tweak the choices the Congolese made as they shed the shackles of their oppressors. Personal growth remains one of the key themes in the book, as all the girls become women and, by the latter portion of the book, their lives as adults and parts of families of their own. Kingsolver keeps the reader hooked throughout as she spins this wonderful tale that forces the reader to digest so much in short order. I am happy to have been able to read this piece and take away much from it, without the need to feel as frustrated as I might have been during my apartheid experience. Still, there is much to be said about the ‘backwards’ interpretation Europeans and missionaries had when spying the African jungle communities.

Kudos, Madam Kingsolver, for such a wonderful novel. I took much from all you had to say and will likely return to find more of your writings, hoping they are just as exciting.

This book fulfills Topic # 1: Recommendation from Another, in the Equinox #3 Book Challenge. A special thank you to Farrah (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5...) for the suggestion!

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A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...