The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ was a nine-thumbs up, one thumb down book for the Reading Group.

Nathan Price, a Baptist missionary, takes his wife and four daughters to a remote village in the Congo in 1959. His mission is to convert the Congolese. The story unfolds through the viewpoints of the five women – each one has their own distinct voice, the daughters narrating in the present, while the mother has the benefit of hindsight. Most of us really enjoyed the different voices but our dissenter found it very annoying ‘leaping from daughter to daughter, as she kept having to work out which one it was’. One of us would have liked to have had a section from the father but the rest of us felt that his sermonising voice echoes through the novel. The four-sister narrative reminded several of us of ‘Little Women’.

We all felt that we had learned a great deal as most of us knew very little about the Congo, particularly in the 1960s (many of us were spurred into doing further research). We found Kingsolver’s ‘treatment of post-war Africa with the backlash against colonial powers and movements towards self-rule very insightful.’

The novel was often surprisingly humorous, as Nathan, in particular, refuses to learn anything from the locals, but tries to impose his particular view of Christianity and ‘civilisation’ upon the ‘natives’, little realising, for example, that his attempts to baptise children in the river arouse a deep fear of them being taken by crocodiles.

All of the characters are changed by their encounter with Africa. As one of the daughters says, ‘You can’t just sashay into the jungle aiming to change it all over to the Christian style, without expecting the jungle to change you right back.’

The vivid descriptions of the jungle with its snakes, spiders and ant swarms led to our own personal phobias as we recounted experiences of snakes and spiders in various parts of the world. Some of us were already Barbara Kingsolver fans; those who had not read any of her books before resolved to do so.

Our next book will be ‘Never Let Me Go’ (2005), a sci-fi novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Please just get in touch in advance if you'd like to join us on 21 May.