A review by nehaanna
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

challenging dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

I suppose I have to give this book at least one star for having made it to the end. But it was a hate read, or rather, a reading out of spite. There was literally nothing about this book that I liked - it was over 500 pages of sycophantic nonsense that bemoaned the atrocities done to Africa in the name of religion and commerce, all told through a white family’s eyes. And through a family with characters that are so painfully forced to represent tropes, themes, ideas, and other drivel the author wished to put into their vacuous minds. 

You have a WWII veteran with PTSD who experiences religious psychosis and becomes a fire and brimstone southern Baptist preacher who dutifully extols the virtues of the Apocrypha? Talk about incongruity. Then you have the wife, a backwards girl from the backwards and rural south who knows nothing of the world and has to reconcile her complicitness in her caniving husband’s lust for power. Then there’s the four daughters, who each represent four loathsome heads of the apocalypse, except the apocalypse is loathsome writing. There is nothing redeeming about these characters at all. They’re racist, sexist, misogynistic, violent, greedy, shallow-minded, and uneducated. The only thing the author does a good job of is impressing upon the reader the extent to which this family is so backwards that some would call them white trash by the standards of the novel’s timeline, and by today’s standards. 

There are so many five and four star reviews of this book, extolling its ability to call our American missionaries and the impact European and American countries had on the continent of Africa. I suppose this book is revolutionary and eye opening if you didn’t pay much attention in high school or world history. But even if this book was good at doing that (which it isn’t, the prose is so disgustingly pretentious and high brow that it’s just cliche and tiresome), anyone with a half critical mind would realize that is book has such a massive blind spot. It tells the story of colonialism, of a continent struggling to survive against racism, capitalism, and greed, all through the viewpoint of the oppressor. The book goes to great lengths to condemn white people, such that one of the characters spends her adult life on a self flagellating approach to life where she punishes herself for her whiteness. And yet still cannot take the time to see past her white privilege and make herself the center of attention.

I could honestly rant about this book for hours and it still wouldn’t make a dent in the amount of time wasted in reading this book. I feel sorry for all the trees cut down in vain to allow this performative drivel to be published and heralded as the pinnacle of good writing. I’ll be loathe to ever pick up a book by this author again, for she can keep her trite and meaningless books with gilded prose and shoddy characterization. 
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