Never one to walk with the crowd, I just finished Barbara Kingsolver's highly acclaimed "Poisonwood Bible". It's the story of the Price family from Bethlehem Georgia, a Baptist preacher who accepts a posting to a remote mission station in the dense jungles of the Belgian Kongo on the cusp of its independence. Nathan, his wife Orleanna, and there 4 daughters, Rachel, the twins Leah & Adah, and the toddler, Ruth May arrive under the sheer unquestioned righteous will of the father. They are utterly without any acquired capacity for being able to do what he has brought them there to do. They arrive an African tabula rasa, and become the very white heart of the continent, marked in a way that intertwines one to the other.
Adroitly, written within the ephemeral web of political, cultural, racial, linguistic, religious, and emotional histories, you will be deeply moved by how these characters, and the ones we meet, navigate this compelling tapestry. To get us through, Kingsolver adopts the persona of the daughters and Orleanna over and over again in turn. Each one is a unique voice, and one wonders how many personalities inhabit the creative genius of the author.
Any positive thing you've every heard about this novel is richly deserved and woefully inadequate.
No comments:
Post a Comment