The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

 

This is essentially two stories. The story of the Price family and the story of Africa. The destruction of both really. Both stories horribly sad and infuriating.

The book is written in chapters in turn by each member of the family except the father. The Price part of the book tells the tale of the extremely religious father taking his family, wife and four daughters, to the Congo as missionary to convert the population. The population isn't particularly interested in being converted. I wouldn't even say that they resist particularly, they just mostly ignore him and carry on in their own way. Which he, naturally, finds very frustrating. The daughters are:

• Rachel, the eldest (about 15 at the start of the book) and really only concerned with her appearance. A bit vapid, her most prized possession is her mirror. But she's not a bad person. Does Not Want To Be In The Congo.
• Leah (twin 1). Worships and adores her father almost unconditionally to start off with. Sort of unofficially the leader of the siblings. Highly intelligent.
• Adah (twin 2). She doesn't talk and "walks crookedly" due to problems at the birth. Also incredibly intelligent. She communicates though writing. She can talk but chooses not too. Observes everything.
• Ruth May. The baby of the family. She's about 5 when they go there. Very adventurous, very loving, very curious.
  

The mother, Orleanna, married Nathan (the father) before he became religious. An experience in the war (WW2?) caused him to have some mental health issues which led to his religious views becoming extreme. The story follows the family, the father's decision to move to the Congo and then stay as Belgium withdraws, the resultant tragedy within the family and then their continued journey as a broken family.

While the father attempts to assert his influence and way of life on his family, the villagers and the land, the book also follows the West's attempts to influence and assert their ways on Africa. From dividing it up between them to forcing a "democratic" system on them via trying to change their local farming system without taking into account the geography and transport systems. Most of this is done through the point-of-view of Anatole who is a local teacher and translator for the family. The farming bit really struck me and has become a bit of an analogy for the west's arrogance over Africa in my mind. He talks about how the west, Belgium in this case, looked at how crops are grown in small amounts in local areas and distributed within those areas and then tried to create massive crop farming forgetting that the means of transportation and the shear size of the country meant that crops would rot on route, leaving everyone with nothing. The arrogance of assuming the European way is the best for all. He described the democratic process, when returning the Congo to African rule. Each village/town/areas gets two bowls, some nuts, no real info on any candidates. Put your nut in the bowl of your preferred candidate and the "votes" get taken back to the central voting place. Sounds totally legit, right? Now, look, I know this is a fiction book, but I have no reason to think Barbara Kingsolver totally made this up.

I'd also like to say that I don't totally view the historical way of life in Africa with rose tinted glasses! I know that many African traditions were hugely problematic, ruled by superstition, rife poverty, slavery etc. I'm always drawn back to what I've read in the history of many areas of Africa now which is the belief that twins were evil and therefore left by the tribes/villagers to die. I mean, clearly that's not a way of life to hold up on a pedestal either!

I just found the whole story horribly sad from beginning to end. Totally compelling. Another one where I wanted to stay with the characters forever. A captivating way to tell two tales in one.