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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
At first it took me by surprise, because it’s so different to Demon Copperhead (and also Unsheltered). But she is a wonderful writer with incredible range. She pulls off the diff sisters’ pov so well, so believable! She manages to present the naivety of the sisters so well, how they go from suspicion to open-mindedness in that youthful way, how even the most devout begin to doubt their father, and they start to question the ‘rightness’ of the life and country that they left behind. The writing is beautiful and it’s so well-researched. Not 5 stars because the final part dragged a bit, but it did feel worth it by the end.
I usually love historical fiction but after reading other books by this author, I think she’s just not for me. She’s long winded and wordy and it comes off stiff and hard to read. I usually love a rich description but I honestly just got bored with a lot of this book. Had it been 200 pages shorter, I think I would’ve liked it more. The chapters were crazy long and the narrator switched too often. I enjoyed the family drama aspect but I also struggled with the African (Congolese?) words. It made me stop and try to sound out the words properly, figure out the meaning, etc so it was hard to get immersed in the story.
Beautiful, enriching, frustrating, enlightening, challenging. This book is a test of endurance, and with it being so long it’s hard to summarize concisely. But at its essence, we follow the five women in the Price family—the mother and four daughters—as they leave their small Georgia town for the Belgian Congo because their patriarch has decided to set his missionary efforts there.
There were some POVs I loved (the mom, Orleanna, and the disabled daughter, Adah), and some I hated (the eldest daughter, Rachel, and the youngest, Ruth May). You can also tell this was written in the late ‘90s with the language used, but I think the deft hand in cultural and character explorations, never allowed circumstances to feel gimmicky or exploitative. While events that happened in real-life are in the story, the characters themselves felt all too real. The narrative line was blurred and had me wondering if this really was fiction.
Going into Kingsolver’s work for the first time, I knew I’d be experiencing a Masterclass in excellent character work, truly stunning prose, and nuanced layers of systemic global and domestic issues (colonization, racism, ableism, religious bigotry, domestic abuse, misogyny—to name a few), but her craft itself exceeded my expectations and the well-deserved hype that surrounds her work. She will challenge you and your worldview, and authors like that deserve to be transcendent.
I’m looking forward to reading more of her work (it’ll soon be time to relieve Demon Copperhead from my TBR). If you’re looking for a tome to settle into, look no further.
For more reviews, follow along on Instagram: @oliviasbooktalk 📚
There were some POVs I loved (the mom, Orleanna, and the disabled daughter, Adah), and some I hated (the eldest daughter, Rachel, and the youngest, Ruth May). You can also tell this was written in the late ‘90s with the language used, but I think the deft hand in cultural and character explorations, never allowed circumstances to feel gimmicky or exploitative. While events that happened in real-life are in the story, the characters themselves felt all too real. The narrative line was blurred and had me wondering if this really was fiction.
Going into Kingsolver’s work for the first time, I knew I’d be experiencing a Masterclass in excellent character work, truly stunning prose, and nuanced layers of systemic global and domestic issues (colonization, racism, ableism, religious bigotry, domestic abuse, misogyny—to name a few), but her craft itself exceeded my expectations and the well-deserved hype that surrounds her work. She will challenge you and your worldview, and authors like that deserve to be transcendent.
I’m looking forward to reading more of her work (it’ll soon be time to relieve Demon Copperhead from my TBR). If you’re looking for a tome to settle into, look no further.
For more reviews, follow along on Instagram: @oliviasbooktalk 📚
I originally picked this up as an assignment at community college. I was fresh off a mission for the LDS church so it spoke to me. Well, no quite what I had expected. I had a feeling that it would be something exactly opposite of what I had experienced, but that's ok. I still enjoyed the novel. The story was rich in voice and detail with deep pockets of relatability...not so much the revolution and kicking colonizers out of your country, but the sense of being lost and trying to figure out where you fit in in the world. Anyway, I loved the line about how a mother takes care of her kids in ascending order. Being the youngest of 5 kids, that was a special line for me. Definitely worth a look. It's not a light read. The themes are rich and complex. Kingsolver dresses them in radiant prose though.
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
At first it was a bit difficult to follow this book, as it is narrated by 5 different characters. But the characters each have a distinct voice and those five characters are very well developed. I loved that the story was deeper than just about the missionary family--it really made me think about issues of guilt and responsibility as well as about our culture and customs in relations to those in Africa. I enjoyed the book all the way to the end, but I did feel like it could just as easily have ended a lot sooner.
challenging
dark
informative
sad
slow-paced
This book really hit me hard. It might be because I was a girl when my parents moved me to Andros Island in The Bahamas for us to be missionaries. Different time and different place, but I was still a part of the white supremacist push of colonialism and white evangelism. The mother in The Poisonwood Bible was likely in her mid-20s when the family first moved to The Congo. My mother was born in 1940, putting my mother and the fictional mother around the same age. The mother in The Poisonwood Bible is the closest representation to my mother that I've ever read in fiction. My mother was born in Texas and the mother in TPB was born in Georgia, if I remember correctly. So to see my mother so vividly in print was...a difficult experience. I listened to this book as an audiobook and the narrator was fantastic. I literally could not stop listening to this book. I cried on and off throughout the final chapters.
10/10 Highly Recommend
10/10 Highly Recommend
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes