The father Nathan himself never speaks to us, though his sermonising voice echoes through the novel. It makes everything more alive and complicated, just like life. It’s one thing to hear a story, it’s another to hear it told through five different voices. It is like watching slow alchemy to read these words and see how the views of the family members change, so-called savages turning into full human beings with a complex and sophisticated culture in front of our eyes and through their words. I loved the words and how it was written, as the story is narrated in turns by the five women of the family, the long-suffering wife of the determined missionary and his four daughters. It tells the story of a missionary family who move from the USA to the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s. I read it first in 1998 and I've read it almost a dozen times since. They were right and for me, this is so true for Barbara Kingsolver's tour-de-force The Poisonwood Bible. I can't remember who it was that said holding a book in your hand was like holding magic.
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