Title: The Poisonwood Bible             

Author: Barbara Kingsolver                  

Genre: Historical Fiction, Classics          

Publisher: Harper Perennial       

Format: Paperback 

Pages: 546

Rating: 4/5 stars 

Synopsis (Goodreads):

The Poisonwood Bible is 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. 

Review:

I finally finished the Poisonwood Bible! I feel like I’ve been reading this forever, not because it was boring or slow, but because I’ve been so exhausted by work that I haven’t found the time and energy to really dedicate to this book! But I’m glad I made it through and it was worth it!

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The book tells the story of a baptist missionary and his family who go to the Belgian Congo in 1959 to convert the indigenous people. The story is told from the perspective of his wife and four daughters, and I thought this was a really cool way of organizing the story! Kingsolver was able to distinguish between 5 different writing styles for each individual character! Leah was a more direct character as she was a stronger character who was more of a tomboy. Rachel was just the worst, she was so self centred and annoying, but you were able to feel like this about her and then 5 pages later love Leah and Adah! Ruth May was 5 at the beginning of the book, so that was also an interesting perspective to read from!

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I really appreciated reading the descriptions of what happened to the family, how hard their lives were moving to the Congo, but we also got a glimpse of how ridiculous the missionaries looked to many of the indigenous Congolese people. Don’t get me wrong, the book is written by a white female from the perspective of the colonizers, but I did appreciate Kingsolver’s attempt to try to show how the missionaries seemed to the Congolese as well! She also taught about the upheaval in the Congo after independence, which I thought was really well done! Overall a great read!

Happy reading!