Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver

It took me a long time to read Pride and Prejudice. I tried, and quit, about seven times before I could finally blither through the details and find the plot. Once I realized that the details were the plot, it got easier. And then I read all of Austen, and Persuasion was my far favorite. I think I just had to grow up a little and meet a few more Mr. Wickhams. Get to know a Mr. Willoughby or two. See glimpses of Mr. Darcy and find Captain Wentworth. I think I stayed in Anne phase (nothing wrong with Anne phase) and with Anne it's that you either marry Gilbert or you don't.

With Austen, it's a little more complicated. There are more things to put the heroine in a tizzy than a rowboat.

But when I tried Poisonwood Bible, AGAIN, I had low hopes for success. I had to put it down the first time when the dad broke the plate---too dark, no thanks. But then a good friend of mine said, "Really, Deborah, you have to go read Poisonwood Bible." And maybe, like with Austen, I'd finally grown up enough, and seen or suffered enough, or become enough to get it.

I got it this time, and it haunts me. Now I wish I had read it when all my cohorts in literature were discovering it. I missed some good discussions. I have questions to ask. I have problems with the text. I want to deconstruct, find the holes, find the wholes, and put them back together again. I need to buy my own copy and read it again with a highlighter so I can figure out what Kingsolver is doing. I could write critiques and commentary and still be just getting to the meaning.

This is just my first reading, but there will be more.

But let me just say, as a post-script . . . that part where the African women are carrying things on their heads, and Leah puts her bundle up on her head and she says that after a few miles she couldn't even feel it . . . that is really real. I have walked with African women, lifting my whatever, too heavy to carry in my arms, up onto my head, and walked. As I read, I could feel my arms strain, my neck straighten, and the weight shift onto my hips. I was reading, but I was there. I was right back there.

I believe that is one of the messages of this book. Once you have been in there, you can leave Mother Africa, but she will never leave you. Her memories will flow in your blood and your heart will beat in time to her rhythm. You cannot go in and come out the same. She will birth you and you will then be her child.

And that was definitely one of themes of the book---what we become as we go and then return or choose to stay. How we change even as we resist. What life puts us through, how we are shaped. And in the end, what we believe and what we refuse to believe.

Good stuff. It was time.