Poisonwood Bible

This is a book folks have probably already described as one of those you'll compare all that you've read before and since. I will describe it as my introduction to literature, to writing. Perhaps I'm late to the party, what's new? The book was an Oprah book, so lots of us have already been all over this juan, and writefully so.

This story is told first person by 5 persons. I would say girls or women, but can't because it's not that simple, better than that and it wouldn't be fair. A mom and four daughters. Each and every one of them tell this story in turn. These ladies go to Africa with their baptist minister dad, Nathan Price. I want to tell you about these Prize girls and their mom. I'll let them tell you about brother Nathan Price and the other parts. This wheel has already been invented and perfected.

You already know about my adoration for Kingsolver from here to forever. I was thinking earlier today that stories must dream of being told by Kingsolver, like (may god forgive me) an egg wants to be an Egg McMuffin in a corny McDonalds kind of way. To be told by Kingsolver is to be told well. She goes in and doesn't come back out until there are no story prisoners left behind. Like a net dropped into the ocean and brought up and released on deck. The details are there jumping all over the place in plain sight now, as exciting as all get out. Everyone of them will be touched and moved to their rightful place. Every marvelous one of them. I had no idea there was that much just under the surface.

Barbara does 5 entire souls in about 543 paperback pages. Before I finished I knew I was going to go again, and I did. I'm like what am I gonna read now?

From Rachel, the oldest daughter: If anyone presumed I was too young for a conversation about adulters and not getting babies they had another think coming.

From Leah, one of the twins: It struck me what a wide world of difference there was between our sort of games -- "Mother May I?", "Hide and Seek" -- and his: "Find Food", "Recognize Poinsonwood", "Build a House". And here he was a boy no older than eight or nine. He had a younger sister who carried the family's baby everywhere she went and hacked weeds with her mother in the manioc field. I could see that the whole idea and business of childhood was nothing guaranteed. It seemed to me, in fact, like something more or less invented by white people and stuck onto the front end of grown-up life like a frill on a dress.

From Orlenna, mom: I was just one more of those women who clamp their mouths shut and wave the flag as their nation rolls off to conquer another in war. Guilty or innocent, they have everything to lose. They are what there is to lose. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.

From Adah, the other twin, my favorite: And all of us with our closed eyes smelled the frangipani blossoms in the big rectangles of open wall, flowers so sweet they conjure up sin or heaven, depending on which way you are headed.

From Rachel, describing her twin sisters: They spent so much time staring at each other's faces before they were born they can go the rest of their lives passing up mirrors without a glance.

From Leah describing Mama Tataba, their house-mom. She had a blind eye. It looked like an egg whose yolk had been broken and stirred just once. As she stood there by our garden, I stared at her bad eye, while her good eye stared at my father.

From Adah: Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations. ... It is true I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.

And one more from mom: I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow. It's easy to point at other men, conveniently dead, starting with the ones who first scooped up mud from riverbanks to catch the scent of a source. Why, Dr. Livingstone, I presume, wasn't he the rascal! He and all the profiteers who've since walked out on Africa as a husband quits a wife, leaving her with her naked body curled around the emptied-out mine of her womb. ...

This is a book I'll always have a copy of to lend, if I'm lucky to have copies of any. There is just so much in this book, so much to love about these women and Africa. The excerpts above are just that, excerpts. None of us can be rightfully described by an excerpt. No way. But a glimpse. The bar has been raised by Kingsolver.