May 28, 2009: Page Turners 7 p.m.

Book: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Discussion:

This month’s selection, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, elicited a much wider range of opinions than last month’s Three Cups of Tea, which almost everyone praised. This variety of opinions became obvious as soon as we voted on the book. Seven members gave the book one or two thumbs up, two voted thumbs down, five went sideways, and four abstained from voting.

The main complaint about the book was its depressing nature. Some of what made the novel depressing was the political climate and the violence that was going on in the Congo at the time. The death of the Price family’s youngest child was even more disheartening. However, a great deal of sadness in the book was caused by one character, the Reverend Nathan Price, described by one member as "a pretty rotten missionary". Price abused his wife and daughters emotionally and physically, refused to let them evacuate when the political situation exploded into unrest, and did not respect to the local Congolese customs or opinion. Instead, he forced his way upon his family and the village, ignored the advice of his neighbors, and constantly tried to baptize the villagers in the river, never understanding that the river was full of crocodiles.

I made a comment early in the meeting that I did not like a single one of the characters in the Price family. The father was "rotten", the mother "powerless", as one patron described her, the oldest daughter was pretty narcissistic and had a tendency toward malapropism, the oldest twin seemed to be miserable by choice to me, and the other twin played word games throughout many of her chapters. Only the youngest girl, Ruth May, really made a likeable impression on me, and she got killed off half-way through the novel. However, a few of us thought that if an author’s work can cause such as spark of emotion in a reader, be that emotion affection or irritation, that author must have done good job. In that respect, some of us sideways voters were glad we read this book. It is one that will be remembered, despite our mixed opinions on it.

We all also agreed that Kingsolver did an excellent job writing the passages from each characters point of view; once we had gotten quite a way through it we could identify which character was speaking by style alone. Judging by some supplementary materials brought by a couple of group members, this easy identification was one of Kingsolver’s main intentions.

One reader told another that she thought the book was too long and that she would prefer it if some of the political stuff was cut out. Others found that part of the books interesting, although they said there were some things they learned about what was going on in that time period that they would have preferred not to know, such as the circumstances of Patrice Lumumba’s death.

We also discussed some of Kingsolver’s other books. One patron mentioned James Michener’s The Covenant as a book that is similar to The Poisonwood Bible but with a different viewpoint. Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was mentioned several times. In this non-fiction work Kingsolver and her husband and daughter go live on a farm in North Carolina and attempt to grow their own food or at least obtain food that had been grown within one hundred miles of their farm. This led to a short discussion on whether or not we could go back to a lifestyle of farming, canning, and preserving. One group member said that she could and that she has tried it before. I declared that I would be absolutely hopeless in that type of situation since most of my food comes from a restaurant or out of a can or bag.

After the farming discussion we wrapped up by passing out copies of next month’s book, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Flyers for upcoming programming were also distributed.