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Type of bind: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781567404081
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
ISBN number: 1567404081
Label: Brilliance Audio Unabridged
Manufacturer: Brilliance Audio Unabridged
Quantity: 10
Printing Date: November 01, 1998
Publishing house: Brilliance Audio Unabridged
Release Date: November 01, 1998
Sale Popularity Level: 679463
Studio: Brilliance Audio Unabridged
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Product Description:
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil.
This tale of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction, over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa, is set against history's most dramatic political parables.
The Poisonwood Bible dances between the darkly comic human failings and inspiring poetic justices of our times. In a compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption, Barbara Kingsolver has brought forth her most ambitious work ever.
Amazon.com Review:
Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 2000: As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: 'We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle,' says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?
In fact they can and they do. The very first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member's fortune across a span of more than 30 years.
The Poisonwood Bible is arguably Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and it reveals both her great strengths and her weaknesses. As Nathan Price's wife and daughters tell their stories in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenage Rachel's tendency towards precious malapropisms is particularly annoying (students practice their 'French congregations'; Nathan's refusal to take his family home is a 'tapestry of justice'). More problematic is Kingsolver's tendency to wear her politics on her sleeve; this is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, in which she uses her characters as mouthpieces to explicate the complicated and tragic history of the Belgian Congo.
Despite these weaknesses, Kingsolver's fully realized, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the very first half, when Nathan Price is still at the center of the action. And in her treatment of Africa and the Africans she is at her best, exhibiting the acute perception, moral engagement, and lyrical prose that have made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber
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Rated by buyers 
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This book might not have been bad. The idea of a missionary family (from the Jim Crow South, no less)moving to Africa had its merits. The idea of narrating from five different perspectives was original and might have been pulled off. Adah was a fairly interesting, if unrealistic and unsympathetic, character. Most of the prose was beautiful. But somehow, this just didn't work out. First of all, none of the characters were believable. The father was too heartless, the mother was too spineless, the daughters were too different and too stereotypical. The thirty pages of epilogue became tiresome, too. The author just didn't seem to know when to quit. The worst part, though, was the tone of the book, something I noticed even at the age of eleven. The author continually bashes America, white people/Europeans, Christianity, and democracy. She continually extols Communism and indigenous Africans. I'll freely admit that some criticisms of the former and some praises of the latter are accurate, and, especially given the setting of the book, natural and appropriate. But hundreds of pages of Big Bad America v Inherently Good and Noble Africa is ridiculous. The author also seems to expect the reader to connect to Leah, who goes from being a dutiful Christian daughter to becoming an atheist and a Communist and marrying an African, hoping that one day her whiteness will be erased. Leah is annoying and the worst of the preachers, and, considering that she's supposed to be so intelligent, she accomplishes nothing with her life and displays no concern for her family or sensitivity for anyone else. Any of the other characters, even the supposedly dim-witted Rachel, would have made a better "good guy." Plus, the author isn't accurate in her portrayal of Baptists. I guess if I was going to write a book to make a religion look bad, I would at least do some research very first so I could attack it properly.
Rated by buyers 
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Certainly a great book exposing how one culture whether miles apart or continents apart do not understand one another. I have a son who has an austism spectrum disorder, and although this book is not even close to anything to do with autism or any other kind of disability...this book somehow made me able to "see" how one set of people does not understand another and for no particular reason, other than they are different from one another in such a way that one cannot possibly comprehend. I'd say if you arent reading it for the actual story, and you know of someone with a disorder, try to think of that person as a 'native' and you as the 'colonist' as in this story and you may have your answer or be able to pass it along to someone else.
Rated by buyers -
It is easy, in the (politically) post colonial world of modern Africa to descend into limp wristed European angst.
This book teeters on that edge.
It is a book written for colonials and the colonialists.
It has very little to say to those of us whose birthright is Africa, of whatever colour, creed, nationality (or tribe).
It charts that moment in time when direct political subjugation was replaced by economic subjugation through local proxies.
Alas, this is a human tendency that has persisted through all of the history of humanity.
It uses the brief period in the history of Zaire (then Congo) immediately prior to, then after the death of Patrice Lumumba and the dictatorship that followed as the locus for it's message. Thereafter it rambles on to the ends of days of it's narrators.
What I liked about this book outweighs my dislikes, so here are some of them ...
Some things I liked about the book ...
- The different voices giving perspectives on the same events. The truth is a secret garden and we all look into the garden from a different vantage point. Each bush and shrub is a cultural, personal or similar impediment to seeing the complete picture, and Barbara Kingsloveruses her device to good effect.
- The political, social, economic and cultural drivers are well brought out, and their implications on the outcomes of everyday life is thoughtful and so well constructed
- The writing itself is evocative and moving
Some things I did not like about this book ...
- It is too long. The last "books" could quite easily have been replaced by an epilogue, and would (imo) have carried more weight. The later stories of the women would have been better served in follow up books, as a series maybe.
- It is too euro-centric. This has the (unintended?) consequence of transmogrifying it into a polemic against Western culture, values and mores. Sketchily decrying western consumerism and the avariciousness of big business allied to political expediency does not reflect the reality of the world's steady drift into exactly that milieu. In the final History of the World as seen by Mankind, will it matter that we rape and pillage our societies and geographies by proxy or through our own efforts?
- For a work of such high ambition, it does not answer the "so what?" test, nor does it point a way forward: it drifts to its own conclusion, flotsam and jetsam washed up by a high tide of introspection.
Rated by buyers -
This powerful novel by Barbara Kingsolver charts the lives of a missionary family and portrays the interplay of good intentions and motives warped by dogma. One ends up with an aching wonder ... what was changed, by whom and who or what prevailed!
Rated by buyers -
"Jesus is Bangala!" declares Reverend Nathan Price to his ragtag congregation deep in the Congolese jungle. The exclamation is full of irony; in the villagers' native Kikongo, "bangala" means either "precious and dear" or "poisonwood tree," depending on the pronunciation. Rev. Price blithely uses the latter pronunciation, characteristically misunderstanding his would-be flock as he blunderingly tries to superimpose Christianity and American customs onto their culture. The consequences of Price's ignorance (and arrogance) are grave, playing out alongside the exploitative history of Belgian colonialism, the struggle for independence, and the subsequent CIA coup that replaced the Congo's very first elected leader.
Kingsolver's engrossing novel is narrated by the five Price females, each coping in her own way with what they have been part of. Orleanna is a missionary wife who, as a woman in the late 1950s, has little choice but to obey her husband, but who later struggles with her complicity in Nathan's--and America's--interventions in the Congo. Rachel, the eldest daughter, is vain and superficial (when the house is besieged by army ants, Rachel rescues not one of her weaker siblings, but her mirror), with an attitude of pure condescension toward the villagers she lives among. Then there are the twins: Leah, a tomboy who tries in vain to win her father's love, and the dark, poetic Adah, who was crippled in the womb. The youngest daughter, Ruth May, is most beloved by Orleanna, who struggles to protect her from the dangers of the jungle. Some make it out of the Congo; others do not, whether by tragedy or by choice. In the latter half of the book, the surviving members come to terms with their time in the Congo in different ways: becoming part of the machinery of exploitation, shunning whiteness and assimilating into Congolese culture, entering the healing profession, or turning inward.
Only Nathan remains essentially untransformed by the Congo, although he does evolve into a more grotesque version of himself. Unlike the (mostly) dynamic Price females, he is a one-dimensional character with no redeeming qualities, quick to anger and incapable of seeing past his rigid views. While he is a poignant symbol of colonialism and post-colonial intervention, trying to baptize the village children in crocodile-infested waters, the flatness of his character makes him seem inhuman.
"The Poisonwood Bible" is beautifully written, and the story of Price family is absorbing, as is the history of Western intervention in the Congo. A brilliant novel.
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