I am humbled

I am humbled at the prospect of trying to write a book review for

The Poisonwood Bible.
by Barbara Kingsolver, of course.

How does she do it?

Somehow she's inside five brains, seeing Africa, seeing the Congo, and it never feels like a novel at all.  It's a documentary written by five people and it's not to be believed.

What she must have put into writing this!  Not just emotionally but creatively--four sisters, all unique.  Leah is energetic and matter-of-fact; Adah is mystical; Ruth May is curious; Rachel is homesick and angry.  The story is told by the four girls in smooth narration--sometimes sequential, sometimes parallel, and on occasion skipping a whole decade.  The girl's stories are pieced together with an occasional chapter from their mother, who is writing far in the future, far away from Africa.  They all get their own voices--Adah has a talent for palindrones and turning the English language on its head.  Ruth May, the youngest, has shorter chapters and makes grammatical errors.  Rachel is the original Mrs. Malaprope but her mistakes have a way of making a picture,  "...like a putative from the law."  "naked as a jaybird's egg."  (That's really naked.)  And Leah, poor Leah, the one most in the shadow of their father, will be the one first to reach for the light and be burned.

They say it's a novel but it's way past a novel.  It's way past historical fiction.

But what is it about?  It's about a wife and four daughters of a Baptist preacher from Georgia who go on mission to the Congo in 1959  We first suspect and then know it for real--he's a nutcase.  A violent, abusive, monomaniac with no feeling for the reality of the Christian faith let alone the reality of compassion, humanity, or love.  Not even for his own family.

Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

He is an incarnation of the western world encountering Africa.  Some men went to grow rich from diamonds and uranium ore; some to gather up heavenly riches by collecting souls.  With no attempt to understand the flora, fauna, culture or history of the continent, he transplants his own culture and expects it to take root.  On his first day, he sees the women topless and calls them sinners who must be rebuked for their nakedness.  And it gets worse. 

But the story isn't really about him.  It's about the five women whose lives he dominates, even unto death.  Why did they let it happen?  You'll grow to understand, just as I did.   It's all in the words they wrote.

The story is sad but no sadder than it needs to be.  It's just...
Real.
It didn't really happen, but it did.  In many times and many places, it did.