The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

"I feared him more than it's possible to fear a mere man. Feared Him, loved Him, clamped my hands over my ears to stop His words that rang in my head even when He was far away, or sleeping. In the depths of my sleepless nights I would turn to the Bible for comfort, only to find myself regaled yet again. Unto the woman God said: I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is a wide-reaching novel. It's about white Western privilege and white Western guilt, the meddling of the first world in the third, the tyranny of religious fanatacism and of misogyny. It centers on Orleanna Price and her four daughters - Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May - and their hard life under the thumb of the family's patriach, Nathan, a Baptist missionary. At Nathan's behest the family moves to a village in the Congo, where they come undone under Nathan's harsh rule - made all the more intense by his inability to impose his beliefs on the Congolese people - the clash of cultures, political upheaval, and eventually a death. In the end, the family ends up scattered, some remaining in Africa, others returning to the United States, but always connected by their experiences in the Congo.

At the heart of the novel is the theme of one entity attempting to impose its will on another. First the Belgians and then the Americans impose their will on the Congo, attempting to tailor it to their own interests and turning it into a war zone of conflicting desires and stark brutality. Nathan attempts to force Christianity on the Congolese and eventually goes mad (if he could ever have been said to be truly sane) at his inability to make them accept the teachings of the Bible. For a time Nathan succeeds in ruling over the women in his life but, one by one, they turn away from him, their fear of him becoming outright hate. Kingsolver sets up Leah as a mirror to her father, beginning the novel as his most ardent disciple and ending it as his exact opposite. She comes to embrace the native way of life, to despise the foreign intervention which has massacred the African continent, and to have four sons, each of whom possesses qualities that remind her of herself and her sisters. Through her, as part of the true legacy that Nathan has left, he will be redeemed, though he hardly deserves it.

Kingsolver tells the story from the perspective of the wife and daughters, the wife relating her story far removed from the events, the daughters as the events are happening. The narrative voices of the daughters shift as they age and grow as people and as their perspectives change, so does the novel's view of the Congo and its people, becoming more nuanced, less simplistic. Kingsolver's prose style is strong and assured and incredibly effective and the novel itself is rich and poignant. The Poisonwood Bible is a wonderful book, beautifully rendered.