The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible is my first Kingsolver novel, after the author came highly recommended to me by some colleagues. This is a pretty chunky one at over 600 pages, and due to the depth of the narrative and some complexities in the writing style, it took me almost a week to read - for me, that's a long time! The novel follows the Price family, with parents Nathan and Orleanna and their four children Rachel, Adah and Leah who are twins, and the baby Ruth-May. Nathan is an evangelical Baptist and in 1959 he moves the family from Georgia in the USA to the Belgian Congo in the heart of Africa. They are swept into a life of poverty, danger and simplicity, in great contrast to their neat and predictable home in America. Nathan is fiercely religious, and enforces this religion upon his family often in violent ways - and slowly but surely the girls begin to distance themselves from his belief system. 

The novel is narrated primarily by the four children as they recount their experiences in the Congo, but we also hear from Orleanna Price later on in her life. The novel is divided into seven books: Genesis, The Revelation, The Judges, Bel and the Serpent, Exodus, Song of the Three Children and The Eyes in the Trees. In each book we hear first from Orleanna as she narrates in hindsight of their time in the Congo, and then the children as they discuss their present-day experiences in Africa. Kingsolver's characterisation is just wonderful - she really develops each of the characters with their own individual quirks and recognisable narrative voice. For example, Adah suffers from hemiplegia - a brain injury which was caused in the womb whilst her and her twin sister Leah went through a difficult birth - and this causes one side of her body to drag behind her. She is mute at the beginning of the novel and her narration often features sentences written backwards, and she continues to play with language even when she has almost fully recovered later in the novel. This makes for some challenging passages which you often have to read numerous times.

This wonderful book details the dangers of devotion, the uncontrollable landscape of the Congo which will not bend to fit Nathan's agenda, and the breakdown - and somewhat regeneration - of a strained family unit. The depiction of family was perhaps the standout feature of this novel, and you become attached to the children over its 600-odd pages. This was a fairly challenging read at times, but ultimately it was definitely worth it.