The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
Why this one?
I’ve encountered Kingsolver twice in my recent reads, first with the excellent The Lacuna and then earlier this year with the even better Dickens-inspired Demon Copperhead (2022). Pretty much every time I’ve posted about her, though, I’ve had a comment or two suggesting that I should go back to this, her 1998 novel which was shortlisted for the 1999 Women’s Prize but lost out to Suzanne Berne’s A Crime in the Neighborhood.
Barbara Kingsolver (1955- ; active 1988- ) was born in Annapolis, Maryland, US. She grew up in Kentucky, briefly living in what’s now the Democratic Republic of Congo with her family, before studying at DePauw University, Indiana on a music scholarship. She moved to Arizona where she earned a master’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.
She began her writing career in the 80s, first as a science-focused journalist before branching out into fiction, initially as a hobby. Her first novel, The Bean Trees, was published in 1988, followed by Animal Dreams (1990) and Pigs in Heaven (1993; a sequel to her debut). The Poisonwood Bible (1998) is probably her best known work, a huge commercial and critical success that was shortlisted for the Pulitzer as well as the Women’s Prize. She has since published five further novels, including 2010 Women’s Prize winner The Lacuna, as well as poetry, essays and non-fiction. In 2023 she became the first two-time winner of the Women’s Prize with Demon Copperhead.
In 2000, she established the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, which is intended to support writers whose unpublished works support positive social change. In the 90s she was a founding member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band made up of published writers including Stephen King, Amy Tan and Matt Groening.
Thoughts, etc.
The Poisonwood Bible follows the Price family, led by the missionary preacher Nathan, as they move from their home in Georgia in the US to the small village of Kilanga in what was then the Belgian Congo. While it is Nathan’s vocation that takes the family to Africa, the novel is told from the perspective of the five women of the family: the mother Oreleanna, who narrates from a retrospective position, later in life, and the four daughters of the family. Of these, we hear most from Leah, one of two twins (14 at the start of the novel), who is intelligent, articulate and keen to integrate; her twin Adah suffers from hemiplegia and is mostly mute, though wildly creative in her written / inner prose; the eldest sister Rachel (15 at the start) is wedded to American culture and prone to amusing malapropisms in her narration; and the youngest, Ruth May, is just 5 and least burdened by past experience. All of the sisters are thoroughly versed in the Bible and influenced by its style and content in their prose (even Ruth May!)
The largest portion of the book is taken up with the family’s time in Kilanga, where they struggle (to varying degrees) with the climate, culture and cohabitants of their new world. Nathan is determined to convert every last one of the locals to Christianity, by whatever means possible, but is utterly tone deaf and incapable of compromise. He constantly shoots himself in the foot with his lack of attempts at understanding, from attempting to baptize children in a section of river notorious for crocodile attacks, to his repeated proclamation “Tata Jesus is bangala” - a word which has multiple meanings, and in his sloppy pronunciation is taken for ‘Poisonwood’ rather than the intended positive interpretation. He does little to improve life for his family either, with Orleanna left to handle the neverending household work of food sourcing, preparation and provision of protective medication. Of the daughters, none are especially thrilled with their new scenario but Leah is most keen to learn and integrate, forming a relationship with the teacher Anatole, and the young Ruth May manages to bond without effort with the other local children. Adah is perhaps the most perceptive but isolated and therefore misunderstood, and Rachel is least able to cope, unable to forget the luxury in which she lived in the US. Coupled with her pale and blonde appearance, she is the daughter seen as most out of place by the locals.
When Congo heads for conflict as independence is declared under Patrice Lumumba, the family are urged to leave, but Nathan stubbornly insists on staying to “complete” his mission, despite it being abundantly clear to everyone else by this point that his task is futile. With their church stipend removed, life becomes even more difficult for the family, who struggle for food and are beset by illness, plagues, and ultimately tragedy. Orleanna ultimately spearheads an escape for the female family members, leaving Nathan behind to become increasingly wild in his preaching as the others go on to very different lives. The latter sections of the book cover many more years but are relatively shorter, with the family largely separated and scattered across the globe. Only Leah remains largely in Congo, with Anatole, while Rachel finds herself very much at home in the relative luxury of white-dominated South Africa, and Orleanna and Adah return to the US together, with the latter pursuing a scientific career and finding herself able to cure herself of the majority of her disabilities.
Like the other Kingsolver books I’ve read, this is a rich, expansive epic. While its focus is a family unit, they act as a proxy for Western (and especially US) relations with post-colonial Congo (and Africa more broadly). Nathan is most obviously representative of the worst excesses of colonial era missionary zeal, simply unable to comprehend any form of compromise or conversation with the local people, even if it would aid his own objectives. He’s presented, rightly, with limited sympathy and as a man out of time, effectively laughed at behind his back by the locals and becoming increasingy ludicrous and stubborn over time. He is given a backstory which explains his fervour, but it does little to endear him to us.
Orleanna takes too long to do the right thing, and pays a tragic price for her delay in getting away from her husband. In later life she is crushed by guilt, for her complicity in Nathan’s futile and destructive decisions, a kind of representative of the wider Western world who have acquiesced in Africa’s colonial treatment by silence. Rachel is pure selfishness, another character who elicits relatively little sympathy. She’s representative of many Westerners who were only too happy to slide into the vacuum created by the end of colonialism and fill it with corrupt capitalism, leaching off of the country and its richer residents without engaging in any meaningful way with the culture.
Adah is probably the most complex and therefore interesting character in the book. Her inner world and linguistic playfulness is fascinating and makes for the most exuberantly enjoyable sections of the novel. She seems to represent a kind of intellectualism, though, in which she has retreated (by choice, to at least some degree) into a world of analysis and deconstruction which is perceptive but ultimately, in its own way, also quite self-focused. Later in life she is able to turn this around and use her power to effect some sort of good through her scientific work, but even she admits that she does this largely for the love of the intellectual challenge rather than the desire to help. Leah conversely displays a natural empathy and effectively becomes (in her own mind, if not that of others) a ‘local’., in part because of her devotion to Anatole but also seemingly through a genuine inability to draw back from the world she has now become a part of. She’s clearly the most sympathetic in terms of her relationship with the country and relatively noble intent, but (especially in later years) she’s a rather less interesting character than her siblings as a result, and occasionally comes off as overly worthy and somewhat sanctimonious. I suspect even her character is not meant to be viewed entirely uncritically - she’s perhaps there to exemplify that even the best intentions of Westerners to integrate can only ever work to a degree, and to interrogate whether there’s still a kind of selfishness even in her motives for staying.
I enjoyed the book’s scope, ambition and especially its use of different voices. Its characters are rich and complex - while evidently allegorical to some degree they also feel authentic, believable and three-dimensional. Adah’s sections are a particular delight and Rachel’s make for amusing hate-reading too. It’s a big old book to get through, and while it’s definitely justified to a great extent, I did find some of it a little bit of a slog to get through. Clearly the Kilanga section is central and pivotal to everything that happens afterwards, but I could perhaps have stood for a little more of the characters’ later-life exploits and a little less of the repetitious aspects of their day-to-day struggles in the village. I did also occasionally find myself questioning the absence of African voices in the novel. I know that that’s really the point, that part of Kingsolver’s impact in damning Western reactions to postcolonial African is absolutely dependent on us seeing it through the voices of the participants, rather than the victims. But I can’t help feeling that in today’s world, this might be a harder sell in terms of its underdeveloped local characters, who (with a few honorable exceptions) are described more by their appearance than through their inner thoughts, beliefs or desires.
Score
8.5
It’s a big old beast of a book, with loads of good stuff scattered through it (humour, deep emotion, linguistic playfulness, great characters, etc). I somehow didn’t quite love it as much as the two more recent Kingsolver novels, but it’s still a thought-provoking and very much worthwhile read.
Next up
I have a few more Netgalley-supplied new reads to get through before stepping back into any more classics…
