Library Book Group To Discuss ‘Poisonwood Bible’

The C.H. Booth Library Book Group will meet on Thursday, February 17 to discuss Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, a work that seems to elicit strong feelings of both love and hate by those who have read it.

The group will begin its meeting at 7:30 pm on the third floor of the library, and always welcomes new members. Please don’t feel you need finish the entire book in order to join in the discussion.

The Library Book Group meets the third Thursday of every month at the Booth Library, 25 Main Street in Newtown. On March 16, the group will read In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez; April 20, The Pilot’s Wife; May 18, ’84 Charing Cross; and on June 15, Map of the World by Jane Hamilton. For additional information, call the library at 426-4533.

When Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they’re not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: “We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle,” says Leah, one of Nathan’s four daughters. But of course it isn’t long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they’ve arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan’s fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?

In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan’s intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and on the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor’s animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member’s fortunes across a span of more than 30 years.