A southern Baptist family comes into the Congo as missionaries. On the first page, a mother leads her four daughters through the jungle. They are, ‘pale, doomed blossoms, bound to appeal your sympathies.’ The woman’s hair ‘is tied in a ragged lace handkerchief, and her curved jawbone is lit with large, false-pearl earrings as if these headlamps from another world might show the way.’ Kingsolver sets the warning tone early. The description of the Orleanna’s earrings mirrors the reasons why the family have come to Africa. They are a metaphor for the West’ white, clean ideology being foisted upon the dark, heathen Africans. The family are the headlamps, the Christian light, bringing their message of hope to the villagers of Kilanga. Her earrings, however, are ‘false-pearl.’ Nothing they bring from America will help the family; nothing material, and nothing in the way of cultural understanding.

In the first chapter, they come into the jungle bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes. It is 1959, and the stirrings of nationalism and independence movements in Africa are ever-present. Kingsolver tracks the family for three decades as they process their experience in a post-colonial world. Kingsolver starts the novel with the foreshadowing of the events to come. She draws the reader in by using the second person ‘you,’ appealing to our immediate sense of danger. ‘Be careful,’ she warns us. ‘Later on, you’ll have to decide what sympathy they deserve.’ The descriptions of the jungle convey the imagery of nature waiting to strangle the family. The jungle has its own personality in this novel. The family cannot tame it, nor can they work with it.

Narrated from the perspective of the mother and her four daughters, the novel moves continually between them. Kingsolver uses simultaneous, consecutive narration – narrating the same events from different voices. Rather than this technique chopping up the flow, the narrative moves fluidly from one perspective to another. Each voice is different, influenced by the girls’ ages, experiences, and distinct personalities. The mother narrates from a place that is further removed in time, giving her a more retrospective point of view. One of the most fascinating things about this novel is the voice of the father, Nathan Price. We never directly hear his voice; he has no direct dialogue of his own. The reader has referential information only, yet we feel his presence on every page. He dominates. It is as if he is looking over his family’s shoulders and is breathing down their necks.

Nathan’s frightening fundamentalism extends to him treating his family with arrogance and the villagers with both arrogance and ignorance. Nathan never gives up his Western perspectives, and so, he never properly learns the Congolese language. He gets into trouble with pronunciation and emphasis. ‘Jesus is Bangala,’ he says. He does not understand why the Congolese are not enthusiastic about converting. He thinks he is saying, ‘Jesus is precious,’ but his mispronunciation means Jesus is ‘poisonwood.’  He also cannot understand why the Congolese do not want to go into the river to be baptised. The reason is that there are crocodiles that have eaten their children. He does not know because he does not ask. On arrival in the village, the first thing that Nathan does is to admonish the women for having bare breasts. Nathan is frustrated by the lack of communication with the Congolese. Yet, his five-year-old daughter plays and communicates with the Congolese children without either speaking each other’s language. The children cross the cultural divide because they genuinely engage with the local people. They are unencumbered by dogma and cultural constraints. Despite their innocence, they have more insight into why the family is failing in the Congo than their father does. They are bewildered as to why their father cannot adapt but are torn between loyalty to him and the truths, they are discovering for themselves.

Nathan is obsessed with the redemption of the Congolese to the extent that he cannot see that his own family is falling apart. Kingsolver uses allegorical tales from her African characters to help Nathan’s children understand why the villagers are not convinced about the new religion being thrust upon them, and why the existing culture is reluctant to change. When Leah, Nathan’s daughter, takes French lessons from Anatole, she asks Anatole if he respects Nathan. Anatole tells her that when somebody walks into a house bringing gifts, nothing can stay the same, ‘Let’s say he has brought you a cooking pot. You already had a cooking pot you liked well enough, but maybe this new one is bigger. You’ll be very pleased, and gloat about it by giving the old one to your sister. Or maybe the new pot has a hole in the bottom. In that case, you will thank your visitor very much, and when he is gone, you’ll put it in the yard for feeding fish scales to the chickens.’ For the villagers, Christianity is as disposable as any other practice that is not useful to their lives.

Kingsolver uses similar techniques to comment on the materialism of the West and the naivety of believing that there is nothing valuable in other ways of thinking. The novel is very much like an old-fashioned 19th-century novel, a saga of sin and redemption. It has parallels with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. White men leave their white civilisation to venture into what they view as black ‘savagery.’ Their white standards and principles, however, are useless in the environment. Issues of cultural relativism are woven into the narrative. Nathan is bound up in the dominant ideology of his church, that sees other cultures as needing to be ‘civilised’ and answering to a higher authority. He has a Hobbesian outlook on his new environment, while his children are more open-minded and are not afraid to question. There are, naturally, issues raised about colonialism, evangelism and foreign policy; however, Kingsolver never gives us a lecture; she allows the voices of the family to simply tell a story, and through that story, the reader can draw conclusions. The questions she raises are still relevant today. Is intervention by the West into war-torn, or oppressed countries a responsibility? Just who is the arbiter on questions of cultural practice? Where do human rights fit in when cultural practices oppress or harm people, especially women? Can we argue with those who believe that there have been benefits from Western colonial imperialism? The Poisonwood Bible is beautifully written. The descriptions of the jungle are vivid and memorable, and the characters drawn convincingly. It is a masterful work and one not easily forgotten. A stunning novel.