The Poisonwood Bible review
Jan. 16th, 2010 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI have two reviews to write today, and unfortunately this one is going to suffer because I'm going to put most of my effort into the second one. This one is just a warm-up!
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, was a Christmas present, and my first book read in 2010.
It tells the story of a Baptist missionary who takes his family to the Congo in the 1960s. Each section starts with a chapter from the point of view of the wife, followed by alternating chapters by each of their four daughters. It's significantly the best book I've read in quite a while - beautifully written, with each narrator having a distinct and interesting personality and perspective. Seeing the events of their lives from several points of view is fascinating, humorous and heartbreaking by turns, and there is no sense of redundant repetition as the story unfolds. In fact, I think the narrative lost a great deal once the sisters went their separate ways and we only got to see their perspective of their own path, rather than everyone's view of the same thing. As the gaps in time between the chapters got longer, the cohesiveness of the story deteriorated as well, but it was still really interesting to find out what happened to all of them later in life.
I would definitely recommend this book - it's extremely enjoyable and very involving.
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, was a Christmas present, and my first book read in 2010.
It tells the story of a Baptist missionary who takes his family to the Congo in the 1960s. Each section starts with a chapter from the point of view of the wife, followed by alternating chapters by each of their four daughters. It's significantly the best book I've read in quite a while - beautifully written, with each narrator having a distinct and interesting personality and perspective. Seeing the events of their lives from several points of view is fascinating, humorous and heartbreaking by turns, and there is no sense of redundant repetition as the story unfolds. In fact, I think the narrative lost a great deal once the sisters went their separate ways and we only got to see their perspective of their own path, rather than everyone's view of the same thing. As the gaps in time between the chapters got longer, the cohesiveness of the story deteriorated as well, but it was still really interesting to find out what happened to all of them later in life.
I would definitely recommend this book - it's extremely enjoyable and very involving.
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Date: 2010-01-16 11:39 am (UTC)