Journal Entry – Barbara Kingslover ‘The Poisonwood Bible’

This is not an African book, in the sense that it was written by an American, but it’s probably the best novel about Africa that I’ve read. In fact, I can’t think of any modern fiction that I’ve enjoyed more. Perhaps my pleasure was enhanced by me reading the novel while I was working in Africa, acting out scenarios with considerable parallels to those described in the book.

The book tells the story of a Baptist missionary family who move to the Congo to carry out their evangelical mission. The book tells their story, from departure to the final resting place of each character. To even summarize the complex narrative is quite a task; an epic of 600 pages, it tells an epic story in rich detail. The main theme of the book appears to people trying to impose their will on others, often with unintended, complex consequences. The villagers’ rejection and adaptation of Christianity; the wife and daughters’ growing resentment of the patriarch and Ada, the disabled girl who gradually rejects her demeaning pigeonhole; these subtly interwoven narratives all bear testimony to the human capacity to frustrate and redirect the efforts of those who seek to tell us what to do.

As well as striking, artful and revealing descriptions of African village life, Kingslover demonstrates staggering array of storytelling flair in her story, particularly through the use of one highly unusual technique. The story is told from multiple perspectives; the four daughters, and occasionally the mother. Sometimes they overlap, describing the same event from different viewpoints. The different prose-styles reflect the characters different attitudes; perhaps most striking of all is Ada’s increasingly complex use of palindromes to show how she considers herself mixed up and ‘back to front’, and seeing the world backwards as a result.

The story is essentially a very sad one. The youngest daughter dies, and the zealous father eventually divorces himself from the rest of the family. The broader social context is also depressing, but the resilience of the family, of the villagers and ultimately the nation at least contains a thread of optimism.