Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

48 reviews

alomie's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This took me a hellishly long time to finish, and it was good, but I really could have done with, it being about 150 pages less. I also found it hard to have sympathy for anyone, by the end I felt a little like choices had been made, and yet... They still moaned/suffered their way through it. 

Worth picking up but also good for it to be done. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Torture, Violence, Police brutality, Trafficking, Religious bigotry, Murder, and War

Moderate: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Blood, Death of parent, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, and Colonisation

jade_smith's review against another edition

dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

 Quite simply, I'm in awe of Barbara Kingsolver's ability to tell a story. Each of the characters in this book had such a distinct character voice -- I don't think I've ever read a novel that balanced adajcent character POVs so masterfully. The development of the way these women understood the world around them (and indeed the refusal to understand the world around them in the case of Rachel) felt true to life, and provided a grounded core for a intricate piece of historical fiction.

I've been obsessed with Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" ever since I read it in high school because of it's complex position as a piece of early post-colonial literature written from a (contemporaneously) critical Western perspective. "The Poisonwood Bible" is the successor that I've been unconsciously searching for since then -- a rich and raw examination of Africa's interior, grounded in themes of womanhood, community, and exploitation of power. Kingsolver's descriptions of nature are just as vivid as Conrad's, evoking the humid extremes of the Congo. But, Kingsolver's work is also self-conscious in an immensely important way -- it understands discourses of whiteness, and mythologies of the so-called civilised West. It centers women, and quite justly draws together ideas of racism, misogyny, and class oppression as different heads of the same beast. The villain is not the dark of the Congo, and the problem is not individual men driven to madness by the darkness, but rather it is systems, invented, controlled and perpetuated by Western hegemony. This is something that I believe Kingsolver characteristically does well -- she understands the role of systems in a broken society.

This is one of those rare books that make me want to sit down and write an essay about it. The word I keep coming back to is "rich", because that's what this novel is. From the characters, to the prose, to it's malleable moral compass and multitude of themes, "Poisonwood Bible" is quite simply, very, very good.

Also, any work of fiction that comes with a two-page bibliography at the back instantly has my heart. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Cursing, Death, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Police brutality, Medical content, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Murder, Pregnancy, War, and Classism

booksoversecondbreakfast's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I feel so conflicted about this book. It was very thematically profound and it's one I anticipate thinking about often in the future, but it was also so boring and so slow at times. It felt simultaneously like a 2 star book, in that it was so uncomfortable to read at times and I really had to drag myself to finish it. But it was also felt like a 4 star book, because it really is a beautiful book, with elegant prose and powerful themes.

I liked the imagery of the eyes in the trees, and I like the parallel way in which Leah's four kids all had personalities that aligned with the four personalities of the original four sisters. I really loved Leah and Adah's characters and their character development, but I really disliked Rachel and the Father's. I think that's part of the point, but it just made it a not-so-satisfying book for me.

I think the book was good in that it got me looking into Central Africa. This was the first book I've read that takes place in that region. The theme of colonialism was just really rough to read about, and I found it frustrating reading a book featuring a family taking part in contributing so strongly to the forces of colonialism. I loved that the book still featured the resiliency of the Congolese people and of Africa as a whole though. I think if it weren't for that, I would have rated this book even lower.

I don't know that I will read this book again, but it has definitely impacted me, and has some quotes I anticipate looking back to. I don't regret the time spent reading it, but I've read much more engaging books before, so I feel like 3 stars reasonably fits this book.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Racism, Religious bigotry, and Colonisation

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Medical content, Death of parent, Murder, War, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Cancer and Alcohol

jackbifrost's review against another edition

dark reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Racism, Xenophobia, Grief, Religious bigotry, and Colonisation

amyford's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Colonisation

Moderate: Child death, Deadnaming, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Racism, Grief, Death of parent, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

wordsmithreads's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Racism, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, and Classism

Moderate: Ableism, Child abuse, and War

Minor: Infertility, Infidelity, Cannibalism, and Death of parent

porktheorc's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, and Colonisation

a_kt's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Barbara Kingsolver is truly a one of a kind author. Her voice and presence is so unique and striking that I felt this book come to life as I was reading it. This was really one of the only times I can confidently say that a book "transported me" and it was a reading experience unlike any other. The whole conceit of Poisonwood Bible is to be a stranger in an unknown place. The story is about how for some places, no matter how hard to try to understand the land, its people, its life, its history- the more you are changed by it, even if you never end up fully understanding it the way you meant to. The Price family became as real to me as some distant relatives. I felt like I had met all of these people at one point or another in my life. It probably doesn't help that I grew up in the South, but even beyond that- by Kingsolver's writing I knew them. I knew their fragile emotional states, I knew their secrets, their inner thoughts, and watched them change and be changed, gradually, over decades. Reading this book is like watching the lives of people you get to know very well play out in real time. Sometimes the words on the pages became so realistic I wanted to scream at Nathan Price for his unwillingness to try and understand his surroundings in favor of breaking them down all together; I wanted to extend my hand to Adah and help her when no one else in her family would; I wanted to sit down with Rachel and try to make her understand the nuances of civilization. But of course I couldn't effect these characters' lives anymore than most people can effect anyone's lives. At the end of the day, we all make our choices, we walk our paths, and we must either stand still and drown in the mud of our regrets or trudge forward through it. That's what this book and all of its heartbreaking beauty teaches us. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Colonisation, and War

fpcat99's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Colonisation, War, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

savage_book_review's review against another edition

This was a recommendation from a work colleague back in 2022, but it's only just reached the top of my TBR pile. We follow the four daughters of Baptist minister Nathan Price as they are uprooted from their every day existence in 1960s America and deposited in the Belgian Congo on the eve of its independence to support their father in his mission to preach the word of God. 

While I think the writing is very good, the style severely lets the story down. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the daughters; one of whom is very young, another of whom is unable to speak and whose brain likes to process and interpret things backwards. It therefore feels like you're reading extracts from four diaries and trying to piece together the wider story from snippets of information the girls include. So as you can imagine, you don't actually get a lot of detail about the wider goings on; everything each girl says has themself at the centre of things. In some places, it almost reads like gibberish. It's clear a lot of thought has gone into the structure and the characters, but I just couldn't figure out what the story was meant to be about or why I was meant to care.

It also didn't help that none of the characters appealed to me. I got frustrated with the typical selfish teen behaviour of the eldest, the submissive mother and the idiocy and obstinacy of the father. Honestly, I think the only character that had even a modicum of appeal was Leah. 

The attitudes of the characters reflect the period setting, so there is a lot of dismissal of Congolese culture as 'pagan' or 'idolatrous' compared to the zenith that is Christianity, a strong thread of xenophobia and a fair smattering of sexism and misogyny. And yet the author has managed to illustrate how moronic these attitudes are through the complete lack of understanding Nathan has for his surroundings. This was very cleverly done, but nevertheless does make for quite uncomfortable reading in many places. 

It was certainly worth a try, but this was just too far outside my comfort zone to appeal.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Misogyny, Sexism, Xenophobia, Religious bigotry, and Colonisation

Minor: Cursing, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Pregnancy