A difficult opening and a late mood shift, but still a book worth persevering with

The Poisonwood Bible is a book-club classic but it is clear from your e-mails that it has benefited from the book club motto: Keep Going. Janet Wilson said that the first chapter put her off and she persevered only because it was a book club title – but she was glad that she did.

It doesn’t always work out like that: sometimes members say rather bitterly that they carried on with a book that they really didn’t like and it never improved. But part of the point of a book club is the element of coercion. And I agree: the first chapter of Poisonwood is curious and I wondered why it was there at all, given that the next chapter would have been a far more inviting and exciting opening.

I suspect that Barbara Kingsolver could not resist setting the scene, allowing us to spy on Orleanna Price and her four daughters, letting us know that later on we will have to decide what sympathy they deserve. Deciding on that sympathy makes Poisonwood such a joy for book clubs; it makes you have a favourite that you want to champion.

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There is no doubt that The Poisonwood Bible is a great piece of fiction. My own book club has read it and it certainly provoked a lot more discussion than most other titles we have read. It is complex and, interestingly, although everyone enjoyed it, it came in for a lot of criticism. A few of us did not like the ending. The mood shifted too much and the humour dried up so that some of us felt it was a political statement, not a page-turner any more.

It was almost exhausting to read. The relationship between the twins was worth the book in itself – most of us found Adah difficult to like, even if she was the most admirable and intellectual of the women.

My view is that Kingsolver earned the right to shift gear. This is a rare sort of book; one that entertains and educates and really makes you think about issues which – in my case – I had never really considered before.

Maddie Batey, Aberdeen

July 6, 2007

Why only women’s voices? And does it matter if you don’t get the message about Africa? Alyson Rudd talks to Barbara Kingsolver, our latest author

AR: Why do you think The Poisonwood Bible is so popular with book clubs?

BK: I’m enormously flattered and really happy about it as I worked harder on Poisonwood than any of my other books. Maybe it is a good book for discussion because there are so many layers. The whole idea of book groups is gratifying to a writer. Just when we thought books were dead and that television was taking over, there are groups of people, mainly women, meeting to talk about books and that reminds me of those secret societies that carried the arts through dark times.

I never think of marketing when I write a book. I never think about what people want, only about what I want to give. I always think “no one’s going to want to read this”. When you think about it, this book is about a dreadful piece of history, people in misery, political mistakes – and I throw in poisonous snakes.

Would you be disappointed if people read Poisonwood purely as a family saga and fail to understand your message about the African people?

It is none of my business how a reader chooses to read the book. There is no incorrect way to a read a book except upside down, but I’ve decided that’s OK too. When I finish a book, it is my gift to the reader and gifts belong to the recipient, so just as you shouldn’t say of a gift of a vase “oh, you didn’t display that properly”, I try to observe those manners with my books. Every reader brings their own history and expectations, so it becomes a different book in every pair of hands; that is what is remarkable about literature as compared to the movies.

If you are looking for a family saga, that’s fine. My favourite compliment is “I read your book five times”. There were 12 drafts of Poisonwood and sometimes I would think “who really cares?” So thank you to the readers who got everything.

Why did you use only female voices?

That has to do with the political allegory. They are all female because I perceived them as a family of captive witnesses and that is the position of wives and daughters. Throwing in a son would have upset the dynamic. I thought that readers would sympathise with such witnesses, who were not consulted but had to bear the consequences. That’s how I feel; President Eisenhower didn’t check with me but how do I bear the responsibility? And there is a broad range of answers from Orleanna’s guilt to Rachel’s “well, I looked good”.

Of all the voices, I sense that Leah speaks for you.

I find it fascinating that you think that. I don’t think that. The whole book is me; that’s the author’s privilege. The character I’m most fond of is Adah and I am sympathetic with Leah and Adah in equal measure. I’m not nearly the zealot that Leah is. She cleaves to her father, then to another man’s passion. She is an activist and committed to the greater good – but I’m not like her. I identify with Adah’s cool biological eye. She is standing still at the eye of the storm. I identify with Orleanna the older I get, filled with worry and regret. And every woman has a little bit of Rachel in her.

What images stayed with you from your first trip to Africa and did you tap into them when speaking as Ruth?

I lived in the Congo when I was 7 and 8. It was post independence in the mid1960s and my experience of village life is exactly as described. But I didn’t want to say I had been to Africa because of the presumption that everything I write is autobiographical. My experience was much happier and my father wonderful and kind. It would be bitterly rude even to imply that my father was like Nathan Price. I wrote about the Congo because of what I learnt about it as an adult. It seemed the perfect microcosm of the West’s blindness to the value of what is already there.

Barbara Kingsolver has just published Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about a year of eating only locally grown food. What came first – the idea for the book or the desire to forgo convenience food?

We had been moving in this direction for a lifetime. I grew up knowing the importance of farming, of food as a process not a product. It started out as a lark, but became a quest and, because I write about everything I do, we decided that a book could personalise an important topic.

June 23, 2007

Love and loss, history and humour in a family saga that turns into a passionate polemic for Africa

The Poisonwood Bible is a book club classic. It is, I imagine, impossible to dismiss with “it was all right”. Barbara Kingsolver stirs every emotion, so some part should reach everyone.

Nathan Price is a strict evangelical Baptist intent on saving souls in the Belgian Congo. He drags his family from the comforts of 1950s America to a village where food and medicine are scarce and Jesus just another superstition. His story is told by his wife and four daughters. Orleanna is a devoted mother who married Nathan because she heard poetry when he camped on her doorstep to read the scriptures. Her eldest daughter Rachel is vain and never seems to accept that she is in a different continent and should change her behaviour. Adah and Leah are twins, one crippled but both bright. Ruth May, the youngest, is first to make friends with the locals.

The novel begins as a family saga but evolves into a passionate polemic about how African lives are ruined by Western greed and fear. “Poor Africa,” Adah says simply.

There is humour, history, love and loss. The characterisation is exquisite. I had my doubts about five narrators, all women from the same family, but they soon stamp their personalities on you – even Adah, who likes to say things backwards. I think that it is clear who the heroine is, but I’m sure book clubs have argued about it. Most of all I like Kingsolver’s fervour. She believes in justice and its absence in Africa has fuelled the writing of a novel that will be read and loved for decades. Faber, £7.99, 626pp

We have five pairs of tickets to hear Barbara Kingsolver speak on new book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle at the Southbank Centre, London SE1, on July 4. E-mail books@thetimes.co.uk to enter the draw

Buy The Poisonwood Bible for £6.39 (free p&p)

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