Barbara Kingsolver. NY: HarperCollins: 1998. 546 pages. IBSN 0-06-017540-0
The Poisonwood Bible is intriguing, depressing, and enlightening. If you’re a believer, it may make you doubt God – or at the least His mercy; if you’re an American, you may begin to ask yourself, “Can this is true? What else have we done in the name of spreading our brand of democracy and capitalism?”
Kingsolver speaks through each one of her fictional characters, and amazingly, each has her own voice. Orleanna Price, the mother – struggling to keep her family and herself intact in a Congo mission – is a voice of submission then defiance then a peace that could be mistaken for numbness. Her oldest daughter Rachel speaks a language of rebellion and self-absorption. Her twin daughters, Leah and Adah, have the clearest voices of all, portraying not only their world of confinement in a remote Congolese village but the world beyond of the early 1960's, when the Congo gained independence from Belgium. Initial ignorance of that world doesn’t lessen its impact on their physical, mental, and emotional well being.
They are all victims of their deranged husband and father, Nathan Price, who in his misplaced passion is capable of destroying the family unit but not their personalities. They emerge beaten down, but not destroyed, each one eventually determining her own destiny according to her natural bent – which peculiarly might not have happened had it not been for their Congo experience.
The Poisonwood Bible will make you hungry to know more about the country now known as The Democratic Republic of the Congo, ashamed of your ignorance and judgment of so-called "primitive" nations, and less smug about our place as "civilized" Americans in this complex world. It’s one of those books that will stay with you for days and maybe years. Each time you hear the word Congo, you’ll be tempted to say you’ve been there.
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