Poisonwood Bible [Hardcover]

The first part of "The Poisonwood Bible" is an interesting narrative as told by the four Price daughters of a Baptist missionary family adapting - or failing to adapt - to the culture and climate of a Congolese jungle village in the 1960s. The four girls each have a distinct voice, representing four distinct types - from Rachel, the spoiled American teenager, to Leah, the intelligent achiever who ends up "going native."

But the book quickly turns political. Kingsolver has the Prices in the Congo through independence, Lumumba's election and subsequent assassination financed by the CIA, and the unpleasant aftermath of civil war and chaos. The different girls soon devolve into political allegories. Rachel's spoiled teen act devolves into the racist, ignorant pro-American persona that is ultimately responsible in Kingsolver's world for the subjugation of African democracy and prosperity. Leah, the achiever, remains in Africa and becomes a kind of heroic figure of opposition to American power and culture, renouncing material comforts to ally herself with the New Africa. Kingsolver's tone gets preachy, and the complex problems of the African subcontinent get simplified into a single palatable message: the West is keeping Africa down.

I don't doubt Kingsolver's resolve, her beliefs, and I'm not questioning her research or sources one bit. Her depiction of Africa feels real. But like so many other books about Africa written by outsiders ("A Bend in the River," "Heart of Darkness," etc.), "The Poisonwood Bible" really describes and characterizes its author and her culture more than it does Africa. In this book, we are treated to a distinctly American depiction of travel, of prosperity, and of culture.

In this book, Kingsolver implies through the voice of Leah, that Africa was once a primal Arcadia until European explorers "discovered" the continent and enslaved its people and apportioned the land into colonies. African's inability to adapt to Western culture and technology - according to Kingsolver -- has to do with the intractability of the land, and the belief system created by thousands of years' of tribal tradition and culture. Westerners only sully or contaminate Africa's ideals and "natural" systems of government. Ideas shared, ironically, by the original European visitors to Africa.

Also, Kingsolver indicts America's over-prosperous culture. Leah upon returning to Georgia after living in Africa, finds her cheap student housing overly oppressive. So much so that she has to move back to Africa as soon as possible. Which is a truly typical American reaction to prosperity: what other culture's people would spurn comfort and plenty and return to poverty and misery - for an idea? America is chock full of such self-abnegating or dangerous ideals and past-times: vegetarianism, eating disorders, weight-loss programs, Buddhist retreats, long-distance hikers, extreme sports.

I don't wish to excoriate Kingsolver for these ideals. This naïve optimism is the main reason I love my country, the United States. This belief that there is an ideal to aspire to, to sacrifice for. That there can be a perfect society built on Earth. That someone should, in fact, try to do so.

However, at times her book deals clumsily with these issues. Characters lose their complexity when they begin to stand for an ideal. Rachel, for example, becomes uniformly bad, and loses all trace of humanity. She's easy to hate. As such, she may be an effective tool to denigrate a political view, a propaganda tool, but she ceases to be a quality literary device. She tells us nothing about the human character.

Though the writing is at times brilliant, and the first part of the book was engrossing, overall "The Poisonwood Bible" succumbs to its flaws.

Well researched and deeply moving, it tells the story of a missionary's family from Georgia who move to the Congo in the late 1950s. The father is a religious fanatic, driven to convert the world to his brand of Christianity .His wife and four daughters have no choice but to respect his wishes. Using the technique of alternating first-person voices, each chapter is told from the point of view of these five female family members.

A poisonwood tree grows by their house. It is beautiful but it causes rashes and boils on the skin. It's a great metaphor.

There is the mother, Orleanna Price, who struggles daily with the effort of keeping her family together in a world that is suddenly devoid of electricity, plumbing and food. Precious wood must be found for the stove, water must be boiled to remove parasites, and vegetables do not grow. The oldest daughter, Rachel is 16. She misses her friends and her life in Georgia and yearns for nailpolish and hairdos. Then there are twins of 14: Leah and Adah. Both are smart and open to learn about the world around them but Adah cannot speak or move one side of her body. The littlest one, Ruth May, at age 5 teaches the native children to play games.

Each one of these voices is totally distinct from each other and tells her tale in her own distinctive way. Their overlapping views of the same incident turned them into multifaceted prisms instead of simple story lines. I wanted nothing more to go on reading, finding myself in their world, feeling the heat and the beauty of Africa as each one, in her own way, discovered her own Africa.

But Africa was changing even as they were . Revolution was happening. It was dangerous for the missionaries. The father refused to leave. And the family gets caught up in total upheaval. When one of the daughters dies and I felt the grief throughout my bones. It wasn't just happening to a person in a book. I had known her so well that I, too, mourned the loss and felt their struggle to leave the madness. Felt the raging fever of malaria, saw how each had changed.

The last third of the book follows the surviving women through the next 30 years of African and American history. It is a political statement and it opened a world for me I never even knew existed. Often in books that span 40 years, the first part of the book is the best. But this book even got better as it moved along. It's 543 pages long and I was sorry to see it end.

This is a truly important book. It sent me to the internet immediately to learn more. I've lived my comfortable life here in the United States all these years and never had any understanding about what Africa was like. In this one book, Ms. Kingsolver brings me there. She does it with her art. She is more than just telling a story. She is opening people's eyes. Hooray for her!

I give this book my very highest recommendation. Read it!