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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
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
I'm renaming this as The Book That Never Ends. I would have given it four stars because I was really enjoying it. I loved the different voices of the wife and four daughters of a Baptist preacher who are missionaries in the Congo in the 1960's. It was fascinating and tragic. But then, when most people would have ended the story, it kept going. Well, fine. I usually want a little more information on the characters and what happens next. But then it went some more. And more. FOR THIRTY YEARS. Seriously? It was too much. It became a book telling more about the history of the Congo in the mid to late 20th century than it was a book about these women. I had such a bad taste in my mouth after reading "Pigs in Heaven" by Barbara Kingsolver and it took me a while to want to read another one of her books. Everyone said this one was the one to read and I wouldn't regret it. And I didn't regret it... for the first half of the book. So, go ahead and read it if you want. Just know that like my rambling review, this book doesn't quit when it should.
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This novel is lengthy but the story pulls you along to places you’d rather not go. It’s not a comfortable read, but is an undeniably engaging one. A stubborn preacher packs his wife and four daughters away to the African Congo, where he is determined to convert every native he finds—not a wretched goal in and of itself, but one made without a speck of humility. What follows is a family doing the only things they know whilst trying to survive a lifetime of Africa’s trials. As the novel progresses, the mother and daughters confess the mistakes they made as well as how Africa changed them. The novel is comprised of tragedies galore, yet somehow maintains an overall sense of the hope that exists for us all.
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i skipped doing my modern african history homework to read this for hours on my couch as a college senior. wholly absorbing.
I only read the first few chapters, but I just couldn't get into it. I wasn't into the style or tone of the book. It felt like something I would be forced to read if I were in high school now. Not that all of the books I read in high school were awful, but I just hated being forced to read them. Maybe another day I will pick it up again, but it seems unlikely.
This book was fascinating for a variety of reasons for me. Not only is it set in the jungles of Congo, but the structure really sucked me in so much more than a lot of books. Barbara Kingsolver obviously spent a lot of time researching this book (according to the P.S. text, a couple of decades)--there's a huge list of references used, and the details within the text made me feel almost as if I'd actually been to a little town deep within the jungles of Congo.
Kingsolver had a very nice variety of character perspectives, rather than telling the story all from one person's point-of-view. All of the daughters have very different voices, as well as the mother. Leah is the most trusting of her father's preaching, and for a good chunk of the novel spends her time doting on her father and not really realizing how wrong he was on a lot of things. Rachel gets fairly annoying at times, with how stuck-up she can be, but in the end I did like her for her honesty. Adah, the "twisted child," is very poetic and I found myself looking forward to her passages the most, with her play-on-words and general pessimistic take on the whole situation. Ruth May felt a lot like a filler character at times, although in the end I did appreciate her innocent take on everything.
I actually learned a few things about the Congo by reading this--it's not an area I knew much about (just generals that are commonly known, like the diamond trade), so it was a bit of a history lesson mixed in with a very interesting story.
I was a bit iffy of the final 150-ish pages, where it seemed like the story was over...but it kept going. In the end, I was really glad Kingsolver decided to do the rest of the story in the way she did--in those 150 pages, she covers about 30 years of the after-effects on the family. You never get the full story of what happened to certain characters, but in a time of turmoil like that you wouldn't in reality...so it works. It's pretty interesting to see how much some of the daughters changed after the horrible failure of their father's mission, and how very little one daughter changed. It turned into more than a story of a failed Baptist preacher attempting to convert the members of a little Congolese town, but a story of the long-reaching effects of one man.
Definitely a powerful book, and I'm so glad I picked it up on a whim! It was slow-going most of the time (it took me much longer to read this than I expected--more out of savoring it than it being a difficult read, because it was definitely easy yet poetic language), but it was definitely worth the effort.
Kingsolver had a very nice variety of character perspectives, rather than telling the story all from one person's point-of-view. All of the daughters have very different voices, as well as the mother. Leah is the most trusting of her father's preaching, and for a good chunk of the novel spends her time doting on her father and not really realizing how wrong he was on a lot of things. Rachel gets fairly annoying at times, with how stuck-up she can be, but in the end I did like her for her honesty. Adah, the "twisted child," is very poetic and I found myself looking forward to her passages the most, with her play-on-words and general pessimistic take on the whole situation. Ruth May felt a lot like a filler character at times, although in the end I did appreciate her innocent take on everything.
I actually learned a few things about the Congo by reading this--it's not an area I knew much about (just generals that are commonly known, like the diamond trade), so it was a bit of a history lesson mixed in with a very interesting story.
I was a bit iffy of the final 150-ish pages, where it seemed like the story was over...but it kept going. In the end, I was really glad Kingsolver decided to do the rest of the story in the way she did--in those 150 pages, she covers about 30 years of the after-effects on the family. You never get the full story of what happened to certain characters, but in a time of turmoil like that you wouldn't in reality...so it works. It's pretty interesting to see how much some of the daughters changed after the horrible failure of their father's mission, and how very little one daughter changed. It turned into more than a story of a failed Baptist preacher attempting to convert the members of a little Congolese town, but a story of the long-reaching effects of one man.
Definitely a powerful book, and I'm so glad I picked it up on a whim! It was slow-going most of the time (it took me much longer to read this than I expected--more out of savoring it than it being a difficult read, because it was definitely easy yet poetic language), but it was definitely worth the effort.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Reading this kind of books makes your heart ache for all of the stories hidden within your local library or book shop that will never cross your path. I am so glad, that this story did. Who knows why I picked up this book- but I am so pleased I did. Brilliant.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes