Fiction

[Lhoffman]

Madupont, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you haven't read the book....Who knows?  Maybe someday they will make a movie....too bad Chamberlain is too old.

And why does the Whiskeypriest "hate" this book?

[Lhoffman]

Donot...I don't know how much research Kingsolver put into her writing on Adah, but my edition of PB has an extensive bibliography on Africa and the Congo.

[Donotremove]

Don't get me wrong.  Kingsolver is a first rate writer.  I have all of her non fiction on my shelves and anytime she publishes any new non fiction (the latest, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle") I'm at the bookstore the next day to get my copy.

PB is a first rate book. And I'm sure Kingsolver drew on her experiences with her parents during the time they spent in Africa when she was young.  That she chose to write about Africa in a fiction form tells me that her passion to "show and tell" in a way that would grab you by the throat rather than just inform is because a non fiction accounting can more easily be set aside as one goes on to other things, than a fictional tale--if successful--can be.

I just finished a so-called travel book by Alexander Frater, Tales From The Torrid Zone, where he tells tales of the most shocking and wretched sort, of peoples living in that zone where the sun rises and sets at 6 (with no preamble, I might add.  Just pop, and it's up, then pop, and it's down) showing their astonishing ignorance of things even in today's world, with such a wry tone, you can't help but keep turning the pages.  Frater was born on Iririki, an island in the Vanuatu Republic (a group of islands in the South seas.)  All the while I was reading his book, I was reminded that the conditions Kingsolver wrote of in the PB hadn't changed much at all.  One thing I learned from Frater is that killing twins when they are born goes back into the mists of time.

Now, I'm reading the biography of Gertrude Bell by Georgina Howell and am more than ever convinced we should get out of Iraq whether we can save face or no.  Her time among the Arabs, Turks, and Persians--she was one of the architects of the area of present day Iraq--and what she learned lets me know that we should never meddle in such societies.

But I am keenly interested in what you all have gleaned from PB.

[desdemona222b]

I'll speak for whiskey since he is obviously preoccupied with his move right now:  he has never read PB, or any other Kingsolver novel, although he does have intentions.  He has been joking about Kingsolver's name being instant death to any reading forum on the NYT because a PB forum the NYT put up back when PB was first published tanked so badly.   I think it got maybe 9 or 10 comments before the powers that be over there killed it.  He calls it "getting Kinsolvered", a reference to the movie King Pin.

[madupont]

Colleen McCollugh's book was written about 21 years before Kingsolver's back in '98, which means if she hasn't had her contract option  picked up by now for a movie, then it is unlikely that I would ever see it happen.

I was merely referring to what inspires some people to write dreck. Even if they write it well, they have too much competition for anyone to care how well they did it.  I think that both novels, possibly both first time out attempts, by the way they are described, are genre romances. Their publishers are inclined to  make money that way.

There is the usual announcement in my e-mail today as to which of their authors will be in my area this weekend, mostly Sunday's at book-sellers , and I can't see a single one out of the four with whom I would need to shake hands.

[Lhoffman]

Mad...PB was Kingsolver's fourth novel....The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, Pigs in Heaven.  Your catagorization of the book as dreck might carry more weight if you'd read the book...

[rmdig]

FWIW and additionally because I in no way wish to hijack this discussion, which appears to be a pretty good one, I am planning to read Flaubert's Sentimental Education.  It seems to me that I have read this before but as is often the case I have no recollection of it.  The pubilsher's introduction, however, has led me to believe that this is the Flaubert novel to read and so I plan to do just that.

I recently read Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew, which was quite well argued if at times somewhat dated.

[Donotremove]

PB is not in any way shape or form a "romance" genre candidate.  It beongs in mainstream, universal fiction of the best quality.

Nytempsperdu, I hadn't thought of it but I believe you are right in saying that Leah is the most like Kingsolver of all the characters.  But her education wandered a bit until she settled on biology ( a masters, I believe) as did Adah's.  Ah, twins.  A bit of this and a bit of that.

Yes, Oleanna should have packed up her daughters and gone home when all the rest (except the Fowlers, of course) went home.  But Oleanna was of the last generation that (mostly) quietly followed their husbands no matter how awful it turned out.  And, mostly, society backed the women up on this, frowning on women who "quit."  Right wingers, today, want to continue to impose the acting out of such behavior on all women.

[madupont]

nytempsperdu   re:#162

"How about the tie-in to what Leah and Anatole were attempting in Angola and what Kingsolver & family attempted in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? "

I noticed that; this line of thought running through her creations.

On the other hand, I have watched a movie.  Has anyone here seen:

Apocolypto ?  I bring it up because it may be the otherside of Kingsolver's story about bringing whatever it is to primitives. Maybe, I should have taken this to American History but thantopsy is deep into Theatre(The Shakespeare Riots). I know he'd appreciate that ending because we were talking about this recently; who is it that arrives unknown on the shore where the principals speak Taino.

Mel Gibson sure got a bum rap.  He did produce his epic poem about a civilization (if you could call it that? quite weird,albeit astronomical) that apparently had produced one that nobody has yet been able to understand or fully translate. Several of my friends have been fascinated by it, but it is just too hideous; and Gibson comes closer to bringin it more clearly home to us that this kind of energy system, this system of values exists in reality, and we are it.

[antigone42]

Finally I found you all!. I hadn't been back to NYT books forums in a while, and was saddened to find it in it's current state. Is there a book for July being discussed?
(I am formerly lmdorn)

[antigone42]

Someone mentioned reading Proust. I would be very interested in joining them. I cannot recall which is the first volume. Is it Swann's Way??

[Donotremove]

Antigone, welcome.  Some of us have read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and we are discussing it now.  The fiction site is open at all times to suggestions for books to read and discuss--whatever catches fire.  This Kingsolver book is a leftover from the old NYT discussion group.

So, suggest at will.  Try to cite a title, not just "Proust".

[Donotremove]

And Nathan.  I keep forgetting that he was "sweet Nathan" when Oleanna married him.  His war trauma, being the only survivor, none of which was because of a fault of his own, left him crippled in mind, which deepened and grew worse with time. Were any of these men treated?  How many came home secret monsters, revealed as such only to close friends and/or family.  What were/are the ripples through the baby boomer generation from such men?  How should we feel about them?  What should/can we do?  Many times I would have gladly shot Nathan dead.  To the relief of Oleanna's and the girls' misery, his own misery, the native's misery, and mine.  How I pined for a well-aimed poison arrow to the neck by a mentally abused native.

[weezo]

Donot,

With the fact that Kingsolver is a historical writer as well as fiction, I suspect she did the research to provide the story for Adah's recovery. I would have liked her to go into it more, to show the stuggle that Adah probably went through, especially when she was tired or disheartened, as when they couldn't find Ruth May's grave, that she may have lapsed into her old way of walking and being slow. You may be right about the gain/loss of the recovery and the loss of the dark poetic nature. She no longer needed to peer through the darkness, so no longer heard the muse.

As this is the first Kingsolver book I've read, I cannot comment on whether Leah seems close to her own feelings or life. I was disappointed that Leah and Anatole went back to Africa after getting their college educations. I thought they would remain. It seems they did not do much with their education on their return, but perhaps I missed such points.

[Lhoffman]

And Nathan.  I keep forgetting that he was "sweet Nathan"

This is what I was referring to in Kingsolver's lack of subtlety in PB.  She wanted to write a polemic on colonialism and to write Nathan as its embodiment.  In doing so, she had to make Nathan one-dimensional, strip away his humanity and take away his voice.  

It is interesting to see how Kingsolver pulled this off.  In the natural order of things, we would have sympathy for Nathan.  He went off to war and probably saw himself returning as a hero; instead he comes back full of self-loathing and shame.  He sees himself as cowardly, worthless even in the sight of his God.

Another interesting twist is the spin Kingsolver puts on the idea of happiness.  Rachel is no one's favorite character.  Kingsolver creates her shallow, self-centered, bigoted.  But Rachel has the ability to drop and  roll with the punches.  At the end of PB, she refuses to take on anyone's guilt, even her own.  You want her to get her own comeuppance, but in the end, Rachel seems far happier than her sisters or her mother.