The Poisonwood Bible

Kingsolver, B. (1998). The Poisonwood Bible. New York:  Harper Perennial.

Sometimes I get very tired of reading the mundane and overdone love stories.  I always enjoy a novel with a different perspective.  When two of my colleagues recommended Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, I decided to give it a chance.  Since Kingsolver is a Kentucky native whom I have never read before, I felt even more pressure.  And once in a while the novel appears on the Literature and Composition Advanced Placement exam.  I always want to find novels to recommend to my students that may assist them for the exam.  So, based on the above criteria, I just had to read The Poisonwood Bible.  And Even though it took several months to read (because of my very busy schedule), I'm so very glad that I read Barbara Kingsolver's amazing novel.


Kingsolver takes on the personas of four sisters and occasionally their mother to tell their story as a family of missionaries in the Congo during the early 1960's.  The book is divided into several sections; each introduction is narrated by Orelanna, the mother.  The the subsequent chapters are narrated by the four Price sister:  Rachel, twins Leah and Adah, and Ruth May.  I greatly enjoy pieces written from multiple or unusual personas.  In The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver does both.  Ruth May is a child.  While her chapters are usually shorter, quite often I had to read them twice.  The audience really has to infer a lot of the meanings of basic diction.  Ruth May quite often, due to her age, confuses words or does not know the proper terminology.  Her voice is innocent and naive.  Adah is also a very creative speaker.  Due to a difficult pregnancy with twins, Orelanna's third daughter was left with mental and physical disabilities.  For most of the novel, Adah does not audibly speak to the other characters.  She communicates through facial expressions or writing.  Adah is also very gifted.  So Adah's inner monologue is truly the only way to know the character.  Not to be discounted, Leah and Rachel are also strong and interesting characters in their own right.  Rachel, the eldest Price sister, is a very stereotypical teenage voice.  Her self-centered characterization contrasts Leah's focus on the global good.

Each character's narration is her own coming of age story.  The first several sections of the novel depict the family's, specifically the girls, struggles in the Congo.  Each daughter deals with the life as a missionary's child in her own way.  As three of the girls grow into women, The Poisonwood Bible begins to take a more political tone, focusing on the society and government of South Africa.

It is interesting to see of the Price women follow her own path.  Like so many of us, the girls make plans for their future that do not always turn out the way we plan.  It's no wonder that Kingsolver's novel was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

The Poisonwood Bible is an extraordinary read for any woman.  Readers can see aspects of themselves in each narrator and strongly identify with at least one.