The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
614pp, Fiction
Notes
2018-10-25
Finished Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible this week. I picked it up from Emma’s read pile – I wanted to read Flight Behaviour but figured I should start with the one we had in the house. I’m not a huge one for the family-saga kind of novel but boy is this one good. The way Kingsolver draws parallels between the abusive religious paternalism of the missionary Nathan Price with the horrors of colonialism and later the post-colonial settlement of Mobutu’s regime in Zaire is super effective. Occasionally the authorial voice is a little too present in the point of view chapters especially those of Rachel, the oldest daughter, who’s solecisms can be just a little too perfectly ironic – there’s pleasure in that too, but of a different kind than the rest of the book.