The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
I was enjoying this novel until it kept going, and going and…oh it was finally done. This may not be the best way to start my review but as it continued I began to like it less and less.
The beginning started out so strong with wonderful descriptions of the Congo and the struggles the Price family finds with being in a country so vastly different than their own.
I was glad Barbara Kingsolver decided to add multiple POVs of the Price family and have each person take a different side and attitude towards colonialism as well as the cultural norms they were now experiencing. There was someone who saw it as the West’s or Christians’ duty to educate, industrialize or baptize the “savages” and help them turn away from mutilation or tendencies perceived as barbaric. Then there was someone who was embarrassed by what the West had forced or was still forcing on a culture. It may not be what the West deemed appropriate or successful, but the culture lived generations the same way; what is it for others to say it isn’t working for them?
It was great that Kingsolver continued the POVs of these Price women as they grew older as well as the different opinions at different times in the history of the Congo. I just wish these sections had been more condensed because I felt as if the majority of the book was then political commentary rather than their true experience. At other times the added POVs added a very dramatic opinion or situation that seemed a bit more far-fetched.
It's complex because this book brings up the questions raised by colonialism in a wonderful way. Is intervention a responsibility or just an excuse to impose your belief on others and have more on your side? Kingsolver shows the many sides to this issue and almost softens things by using a family with young girls growing up and finding their own opinions. I wanted to like it more but at the end I found myself wishing it had been over sooner and that it was missing something for me to really enjoy it.
Synopsis: A story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.