IT was thanks to Faber generously offering my online book group The Lacuna as its first read shortly after it won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction that I ‘discovered’ in Barbara Kingsolver my favourite contemporary author. The Poisonwood Bible was the second of her books I read. Written a decade earlier I first of all noticed how her style had changed over this period. I enjoyed the opportunity to compare and contrast the very distinct shift in her writing. The later novel is mellower in tone, more lyrical, poetic even, and emotionally less raw. That is to say, by the time she came to pen The Lacuna the author was handling the conveyance of emotion more subtly which, instead of reducing its impact on the reader, makes it even more intense.
For me The Poisonwood Bible was a challenging and rather disturbing tale. What happens when one man’s controlling obsessive personality wrecks not only his own life, but also has serious consequences for his family may be fiction in this instance, but its gist will be frighteningly familiar to many. The story is character-led, a tool which Kingsolver skilfully employs to move the plot forward as well as providing real human depth as each character relates the situation from her own personal angle in alternating chapters. Nathan Price is the only character the author doesn’t give a voice to, a ploy which serves to emphasise the fact that Nathan is both the villain and victim of the story.
The female characters, Orleanna and her four daughters, are all remarkably well-drawn with Kingsolver paying great sensitivity to their plight of being forced to put up with the increasingly absurd ideas of their tyrannical husband and father. It surprised me, therefore, to realise partway through the novel that apart from describing his actions and behaviour towards his family and his congregation in that small African community Kingsolver fails to delve deeper into the mind of Nathan Price. In showing the way he spirals towards his unfortunate end she only deals with the effects of what is clearly a disturbed mind. She doesn’t, however, explore the reasons for it, the seed of which would have been planted long before.
The last third of the book in which the three remaining daughters (Ruth, the youngest having died from a snake bite years earlier) are grown up and are now following their own lives seems, to me, more like a sequel than part of the same novel. Although I think it's a nice touch to show what becomes of the women and how their experiences in Africa influence their later lives its writing feels less 'charged' somehow, as though the author took a lengthy break from the novel, maybe to work on something else, and returned to it when she was no longer quite so close to its subject and its characters. I'd be interested to know whether other readers share this sense.
The Poisonwood Bible is very ‘human’ and thought-provoking novel which lingers on in the mind long after the final page has been read.
REF. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Faber and Faber, pb
At Home with Faber
16/01/12
It's been several years since I read The Poisonwood Bible and it still lingers in my mind. I loved it, well I loved the first two thirds of it. Like you I thought the last section was really an add-on and it lacked the intensity of the rest of the book, and that part has faded from my mind.
ReplyDeleteI was interested in your view of Nathan, because when I read it I wanted to know how he viewed the events and what went on in his mind. But just seeing it from the female characters' points of view is a dramatic way of portraying his character and it would have been a different story seen through his eyes.
Now I want to re-read the book!
Hi Margaret ~ Thank you for visiting my blog. Yes, it would, indeed, have been a different book had it been written from Nathan Price’s POV. Since writing my review I have reflected that someone with that kind of obsessive/ controlling nature would be too involved with himself to have a wider view and consider how his notions and actions affect those around him. He would probably be functioning at a subconscious level and not even be capable of articulating his reasons for what he does. Perhaps Kingsolver was wise to this and it was why she didn’t give Nathan his own voice.
ReplyDeleteThe Poisonwood Bible reminded me of another excellent novel I read last year, A Place Of Meadows & Tall Trees, by Clare Dudman, in which one man’s quest to improve the lives of himself and his ‘followers’ brings much pain to all who listen to him and act on his (mistaken) theories.
It's a little frightening, I think, to realise how relevant these novels feel to what is going on in UK politics today (albeit on a different scale, of course). A debate for another day and time …..