I love books--hence the career path I have followed thus far--but I'm not sentimental about them. There were books I loved as a teenager that I can see as deeply flawed now (pretty much everything by F. Scott Fitzgerald falls into this category, with the exception of The Great Gatsby.) There are books I didn't like as a young reader that I now love (pretty much everything by Faulkner falls into that category.) And then there's the occasional book that changed my life.
The Poisonwood Bible is one of those books, for about a billion reasons. Most important among those reasons is the fact that it made me think of Africa in a completely different way--not as a shape on a map, not as a continent, but as a place where people live. Reading about the U.S. government's involvement in the murder of Patrice Lumumba made me deeply ashamed; realizing this was a piece of American history that conveniently gets left out of the official story told in textbooks made me furious. I loved the Price family (except for evil Nathan, of course) and found myself a little horrified to realize that I sympathized with vapid Rachel as often as I did with compassionate Leah. That's Kingsolver's point, of course--that we're all a little bit selfish and a little bit selfless. The important thing is to balance those impulses for the greater good.
On top of that, this book contains a moment of genuine surprise that I wasn't at all prepared for. That's a rare treat, when you've read as many novels as I have. The Poisonwood Bible restored my faith in the ability of a book to suck me in, surprise me, and make me sad when it was over.
2 comments:
I guess I need to read this book. Especially since my maiden name is Price, I have a younger brother named, Nathan and obviously, my name is Rachel. Interesting.
It's really, really good. It may take you a few chapters to get into it, since there are so many changing narrators--but once you get hooked, you won't be able to put it down.
Post a Comment