The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver is one of those authors who I had heard of in passing, but her name dissipated among a big group of women I had not read, like Jennifer Egan and Alice Munro and Louise Erdrich. I am seeking to rectify this, because Donna Tartt was also in this group until I read The Secret History and fell in love with it.
After all, Barbara Kingsolver is a Pulitzer-winning author, and this book (perhaps her most well known) is a story about fundamentalist missionaries in the Congo, something that I have direct experience with and interested in.
This was one of my most disappointing reading experiences to date. I had to stop after about 100 pages.
Perhaps I would have liked it better if I hadn’t lived it, first. I spent several months in my 20’s in Zambia as a missionary, and have spent a long time processing the problematic parts of this endeavor, both as it affected me and the people I met. This book feels like a collection of those early thoughts about missionary work and colonization, filtered through an immature lens and told to an audience with little to no interaction with Sub-Saharan Africa to begin with.
The most glaring flaw is that nothing happens. The book forgot the “show, don’t tell” adage and instead simply told me everything in hindsight. After 100 pages, the daughters were still explaining how life in Africa was so different, how their father was abusive and narcissistic (but in a God-fearing way), how they missed the US so much. But there were very few actual examples or events to speak of in that first fifth of the book.
It would be more forgivable if the prose was engaging, but I found three of the four narrators simply boring. Only Adah (and Orleanna, if you can count that) held my interest. Rachel’s opening chapter was fun with all her malapropisms, but that disappeared the next time we heard from her. The story felt like a chore to read through after just a little while.
I’d love to hear some other perspectives on this book, or any of her other fiction that’s worth picking up. Maybe I’ll give it another try in the future, but for now, this one goes on my (very short) DNF list.