The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Image from Amazon

It's been a long time since I read fiction.  I checked and the last one was Catching Fire back in April, followed by 3 books on business/self-help.  Em recommended The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, which she just finished.

I've first heard of this book a long time ago because it was a selection for Oprah's Book Club.  Confession: I used to track down the books on that list in Book Sale.=)

Ok, back to The Poisonwood Bible.  It is about the Price family's missionary journey into Africa in the 1960s.  The story is told from the perspective of the women - the mother and four daughters.  Nathan Price is a stalwart, unrelenting preacher who believed it is his divine appointment to bring salvation to Africa, even at the expense of his family's safety and welfare.  He took his hesitant family to the jungles of Kilanga to take over the mission.  This is where I appreciate Kingsolver's storytelling.  She sets you in Africa together with the family.  You get a feel for the place, from descriptions of drought and torrential rains, the daily hardship over food, the danger of different parasites and wild animals, and the ways of the people.  Through the characters, she explains how the same word can mean very different things depending on how it's spoken.  The same native word can mean either 'precious' or 'poisonwood', a world of difference that Nathan Price should have known in preaching to the locals.

The story is told from the point-of-view of five women - the preacher's wife Orleanna and daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May.  This gives five different perspectives into the family's experience in Africa.  Kingsolver is able to change voices effortlessly, and I especially appreciate the wordlplay in the voice of Adah, the hemiplegic twin.

There are other pivotal characters and events that are weaved into the the family's story.  It might be ironic to learn about history from a fictional work but I learned more about African past, specifically the Congo, from this book.  The Price family was stationed in Kilanga when the country was struggling out of colonial rule.  This was the context that made them vulnerable because people were wary of and even violent towards foreigners.

The family's story extends way beyond the brief mission in Africa, but it was that singular experience that influenced their individual life decisions into adulthood and old age.  The women struggle to make sense of their past, including the death of one daughter during the mission...  Nathan Price brought his family to Africa to change it which he may have failed to do, but it changed his family instead.

Highly recommended!