Poisonwood Bible

I just finished reading Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It is the story of a family of missionaries from Bethlehem, Georgia, who go to the Congo in 1959 to preach the glory of God and reform the wild, unclean and unsaved natives running around Africa. You can probably tell what goes wrong here. If you read and liked The Ugly American, you’ll probably like this one, too. The book chronicles the challenges and changes that they endure. It follows them over four decades and is told from the point of view of the daughters and wife of Nathanial Price, a hell fire and brimstone Southern Baptist preacher who is a true bastard and (spoiler alert) gets it in the end. Thank God. Generally the kind of fiction that I go for is more light and whimsy, but Kingsolver is a master of the craft and it sucked me in faster than I realized I was hooked.

Like any good book that pulls you in, wraps you tightly in swirling, poetic narrative, and then ends, I closed it hoping it wasn’t really the end. The characters had become so familiar to me, the story so engaging, I was sad to finish the book and end our friendship. It was a long book, nearly 600 hundred pages and it took me ages to read it because I can often only read in ten minute snatches of time, but that only made it harder to come to the end. After nearly two months of friendship, it’s over. Now I’m looking for something else to read on the bus. Any suggestions?