The Poisonwood Bible

"One of the most powerful books I've read about the evil consequences of patriarchal oppression — be it personal, cultural, or political."

"This is about everything that can go wrong when you are in another country and faced with another culture. It’s about a family – primarily it centres on a father and his four daughters – who move to the Congo from America as missionaries. The book is tragic because the father has the best intentions of making a good life for his family, but he’s too closed-minded and set in his American ways. I identify with the daughters because they have a childish sensitivity to their surroundings that adults don’t always have. It is important if you go to live in other countries to be aware of the cultural differences, otherwise you can upset people. In my own family there are four of us: I have two daughters. When we travelled around the world in our little family capsule we became very attached and reliant on one another. We were probably closer than ‘normal’ families in the United Kingdom would be, because we shared so many unusual – sometimes wonderful, sometimes difficult – experiences in strange places."

"It’s quite an old-fashioned story, in many ways, of sin and redemption, yet a hugely ambitious tale for Kingsolver to take on. It’s told by rotating narrators—the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, an evangelical Baptist preacher from the United States, who transports all the women in his life to the Congo. This is the Belgian Congo of the 1950s; the book is set against the extraordinary historical and political backdrop of the time. Of course, it’s about evangelism and the Christian mission, but that’s also a metaphor for what’s going on too with the fight for independence and this harrowing mix of religion, politics, and race. On a more personal human level, it’s about moral risk and responsibility. The four daughters at the beginning are very young and Kingsolver handles that telling so well, as they grow from children into four young women. They leave a very comfortable home in the United States to find themselves in a tougher, unfamiliar environment. It’s a strong feminist story, too, about how a woman and four girls handle that. The father figure Nathan Price is caught up in his mission and, in a way, his story—a classic tale of a fervent evangelist—is less interesting. He just doesn’t haggle with the complications that come with displacement. He has a mono-outlook. But for his wife and daughters, it is absolutely a story of displacement. The book is their story. It’s the memories of where they’ve come from; it’s filial responsibility as a wife and as daughters and sisters; it’s about guilt, bitterness and revenge. That’s a really interesting angle. In Song , I didn’t want language to be a barrier in communication and so, I had him learning English quite quickly on the sea voyage at the start of the book. By the time he arrives in Guyana, he has a fluid, fluent understanding of his surroundings. As a writer, it’s nice to get that out of the way and interesting to explore beyond that. As you learn the semantics and culture through someone else’s language, then you can connect much more deeply. Without that, it becomes a very skin-deep experience."

"The Poisonwood Bible blew me away when I read it. Barbara Kingsolver is a magnificent writer. I’ve heard people say she’s a woman’s writer, as if it’s some lesser place in the world of writing. These are huge books that go right to the heart of the human condition. I’m so happy to see her get her Pulitzer. I thought Demon Copperhead was an extraordinary piece of work. It’s not an easy read. None of her books are. This one is the closest to Demon Copperhead , partly because of the Southern voice. She honors that Southern voice in a way no other writer does. You hear those voices, you hear the accents. This is about a family of Southern Baptists. The father, Nathan, is an egomaniac who is determined to go on this mission, whether it’s wanted or not. He drags his family with him into the heart of the Congo, with this white savior delusion that he is going to save the souls of all these poor, ignorant black people who know nothing and can’t exist in the world. He’s a nightmare. I’ve seen men like this. All the point-of-view characters are female. It’s brilliant. It’s his wife and his four daughters (aged five through fifteen). I love the way she distinguishes them. The eldest is like Barbie. She’s interested only in the material world, pretty things and being admired. Then there are the fourteen-year-old twins: Leah, who’s close to her father, and Ada, who is the most fascinating character. She’s got hemiplegia, which means that because of brain trauma, only half the brain has developed. It can make people behave in an unusual way and it can make them think in an unusual way. She is physically disabled as well, to a certain extent. She reads sentences and words backward, and she has this secret language of code that permeates the entire novel. This is really clever, because at the heart of the book is a spy plot to bring down the Congolese president at the time. Yes, exactly, and I love the way that she comes at it, from the points of view of people who don’t know what’s going on but are putting two and two together. You’re looking at it from this person’s point of view and this other person’s point of view, and you’re able to put those jigsaw pieces together as well. It’s completely fascinating. I absolutely loved it. I thought it was a brilliant book. You can absolutely feel the heat. You can feel the tension in the house when Nathan loses his temper and people are terrified of catching his eye. As a gardener, I laughed my head off at him trying to introduce American species and gardening styles into the Congo and expecting it to work. I know that some people have said that her symbolism is heavy-handed, I don’t find it so at all; I like a bit of clarity from time to time. It stands in for the whole way that America tries to impose its worldview on countries and cultures that it does not understand. The whole missionary effort was also doing the same thing. I loved Tata Ndu (the chief of Kilanga) and the native culture, and how they have their ancestors and their witch doctors. I loved the witch doctor. Also, people are very pragmatic. If they think Jesus can help with a certain problem, then they’ll say their prayers and they’ll go to church, but when it’s not really working, they’ll go back to the ancestors again. It’s a very rich tapestry of a book, and I thought it was extraordinary."

"“The Poisonwood Bible,” by Barbara Kingsolver … [affected me] that way."

"My all-time favorites include some literary fiction (Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible")."