The differences among them too often are superficial. I also don’t think there is enough variation among the voices. For one thing, at times it feels gimmicky, like it’s calling more attention to the style than the substance. In other respects, though, I thought the author failed to fully pull off this style. Mostly I liked hearing from these different characters, getting their different reactions. Maybe it purposely slants things in the opposite direction rather than aiming for some kind of perspectival equality, again for the same reason that affirmative action programs exist.ĭoes the device work? I’m undecided if I prefer this narrative style to other choices the author might have made. So maybe it’s a feminist reaction against the all-too-common tendency for a story to place a man at its center, and to reduce his wife and kids to auxiliary characters. Perhaps the author’s purpose is to give voice to those of the gender that in real life-including in the historical period in which the novel takes place-are least likely to have their stories heard. I don’t know why his perspective is excluded in that way, but my guess is it’s a kind of literary affirmative action. Never the father-we don’t get to see him from the inside. Each chapter is written in first person as if by either the mother or one of the four daughters.

The action is presented chronologically, but the perspective is constantly changing. Then there is a much younger daughter who is only 4 or 5 when they leave for Africa. The twins are a little more intellectual than their older daughter, especially the handicapped one, who walks with a limp and-by choice-rarely talks. Three of the daughters are teenagers-a very blonde one more concerned than the others with conventionality and a successful social life, and slightly younger twins.

The family consists of a fundamentalist preacher father who thoroughly dominates the lives of the others, a traditional housewife mother, and four daughters.

The Poisonwood Bible is a novel much praised by critics, about a missionary family that relocates to a village in the Belgian Congo (Zaire) on the eve of independence.

The poisonwood bible author