The Poisonwood Bible Review

 I recently read Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. I had wanted to read this book since I was in 6th grade. The plot concerns a Baptist missionary family posted in a rural Congolese village.  As you can expect stuff does not go to plan, cultures clash and tragedy strikes. Short chapters are narrated in first person by the wife and the three daughters of this fervent preacher, with the daughters providing most of the narration. I enjoyed this narration style, and it allowed for unique perspectives as well as a story that seems to reinforce and converge together. I also enjoyed Barbara's prose and found it very colourful sometime maybe to dreamy, but there are some very nice moments. Likewise, I enjoyed reading as the children grew and changed and all the difficulties they had. Likewise, I enjoyed most of the secondary characters as well and felt that most of the prominent ones were as well fleshed out as they needed to be. The problem with the novel though is the ending. Dear Lord, the novel climaxes about 2/3 before the novel ends and the last third of the novel is in this perpetual meditative state. I understand that their needs to be a long  wrap up to the climax (which was excellent, exhilarating and very tragic) but out of the 130 pages at least half were banal political lectures or a detailed but largely unnecessary outline of the lives of these protagonists. The last third feels like a completely different novel with characters diverging and lamenting about their own struggles individually. I was expecting a novel much like the first two thirds.  

PEELS NO LIVE EVIL ON SLEEP