The Poisonwood Bible

Name: The Poisonwood Bible
Author: Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver

— 1998 —

“

Kingsolver's 1998 novel follows a Baptist missionary who drags his wife and four daughters into the Belgian Congo on the eve of its independence, then watches his certainties rot in the heat.

Decide its fate

The record

Time
An eveningA season
576 pages, about 12 hours: the length of 1.8 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climb
Two readers report a slow opening, and one says it does not pick up until halfway through.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live by
In 20 reviews from critics and book blogs, 8 credit the plot and 13 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else does
One book blog compares its sisters to those of Little Women, and another recommends it to readers who liked The Great Alone.

The case for it

on the characters
“breathing, fallible human beings”
Kirkus Reviews, 1998
on the Price girls
“Ms. Kingsolver does a nimble job of delineating the Price girls’ responses to Africa”
Michiko Kakutani · The New York Times Book Review, 1998
on Brother Fowles
“we meet Brother Fowles, a missionary who preaches love and is loved in return”
five stars · a book blog
on Adah’s narration
“Her inner dialogue is rich and sad, and had me in tears more than once.”
five stars · a book blog

The case against

on the last 150 pages
“the last 150 were an incredible disappointment”
a book blog
on the length
“The Poisonwood Bible ought to be about 200 pages shorter.”
a book blog
on Nathan Price
“Kingsolver works so hard to keep Nathan from being a fully realized character”
Timothy Larsen · Christian Scholar's Review, 2026
on the later chapters
“the characters become mouthpieces for not particularly fresh statements about the abuses of colonialism”
Ron Charles · The Christian Science Monitor, 19 November 1998