If You Like The Poisonwood Bible ...
We can suggest books with the same type of complex characterization, or with some
of the same subjects content (such as family dynamics, bullying fathers,
missionaries, or clash of cultures), but not necessarily all together!
The antelope wife : a novel / Louise Erdrich
"Family stories repeat themselves in patterns and waves,
generation to generation, across blood and time." Erdrich embroiders
this theme in a sensuous novel that brings her back to the material she
knows best, the emotionally dislocated lives of Native Americans who try
to adhere to the tribal ways while yielding to the lure of the general
culture. In a beautifully articulated tale of intertwined relationships
among succeeding generations, she tells the story of the Roy and the
Shawano families and their "colliding histories and destinies."
(Publishers Weekly)
Cry, the beloved country / Alan Paton
Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and
profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his
son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s.
The book is written with such keen empathy and understanding that to
read it is to share fully in the gravity of the characters' situations.
It both touches your heart deeply and inspires a renewed faith in the
dignity of mankind. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic tale,
passionately African, timeless and universal, and beyond all, selfless.
(catalog summary)
The Mosquito Coast : a novel / by Paul Theroux
An eccentric American inventor moves his family to the
jungles of Central America in hopes of finding a better life.
(Novelist) There his tortured, quixotic genius keeps them alive, his
hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards
unimaginable darkness and terror. (from the publisher)
The prince of tides / Pat Conroy
Spanning 40 years and evoking both the sultry South Carolina
lowcountry and the glamour of New York City , this is the story of a
destructive family relationship, a violent father, and secrets which yet
haunt the now grown children. Readers..."will be swept along by
Conroy's felicitous, often poetic prose, his ironic comments on the
nature of man and society, his passion for the marshland country of the
South and his skill with narrative." (Publishers Weekly)
Swimming in the Congo / Margaret Meyers
In this enjoyable first novel Grace Berggren, the daughter
of an agricultural missionary, lives with her parents and sister in the
Belgian Congo (now Zaire), where she experiences the curious blend of
European Protestantism and African native beliefs. As a seven-year-old,
Grace searches the jungle behind her house, hoping to sneak up on the
elusive equator her father is always talking about. On the way to
boarding school she confronts racism in its uncensored state. When her
father contracts jungle fever, Grace barters for a fetish with which she
can protect him. The author's flowing prose vividly presents the
conflicts and struggles of a complex childhood against an exotic
tropical backdrop. The book is thought-provoking and delightful.
(Library Journal,Joanna M. Burkhardt)
A thousand acres / Jane Smiley
[A} rich, breathtakingly dramatic novel of an American
family whose wealth cannot stay the hand of tragedy. It is the intense,
compelling story of a father and his daughters, of sisters, of wives and
husbands, and of the human cost of a lifetime spent trying to subdue the
land and the passions it stirs. (Publishers Weekly) Winner of the
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award.
The ventriloquist's tale / Pauline Melville
Pauline Melville conjures up vivid pictures both of savanna
and forest and of city life in South America where love is often trumped
by disaster. Unforgettable characters illuminate theme and plot: Sonny,
the strange, beautiful and isolate son of Beatrice and Danny, the
brother and sister who have a passionate affair at the time of the solar
eclipse in 1919; Father Napier, the sandy-haired evangelist whom the
Indians perceive as a giant grasshopper; Chofy McKinnon the modern
Indian, torn between savanna life and urban future. This is a novel that
embraces nearly a century, large in scope but intimate as a whisper,
where laughter is never far from the scene of tragedy; a parable of
miscegenation and racial elusiveness, of nature defying culture, magic
confronting rationalism and of the eternally rebellious nature of love.
(catalog summary)
We were the Mulvaneys / by Joyce Carol Oates
Everyone knows the Mulvaneys: Dad the successful
businessman, Mike the football star, Marianne the cheerleader, Patrick
the brain, Judd the runt, and Mom dedicated to running the family. But
after what sometime narrator Judd calls the events of Valentine's Day
1976, this ideal family falls apart and is not reunited until 1993.
Oates's...26th novel explores this disintegration with an eye to the
nature of changing relationships and recovering from the fractures that
occur. Through vivid imagery of a calm upstate New York landscape that
any moment can be transformed by a blinding blizzard into a near-death
experience, Oates demonstrates how faith and hope can help us endure. At
another level, the process of becoming the Mulvaneys again investigates
the philosophical and spiritual aspects of a family's survival and
restoration. (Library Journal, Joshua Cohen)
A yellow raft in blue water / Michael Dorris
A powerful novel of three generations of American Indian
women, each seeking her own identity while forever cognizant of family
responsibilities, loyalty, and love. Rayona, half-Indian half-black
daughter of Christine, reacts to feelings of rejection and abandonment
by running away, not knowing that her mother had acted in a similar
fashion some 15 years before. But family ties draw Rayona hometo the
Montana reservationas they drew Christine, and as they had drawn Ida
many years earlier. As the three recount their lives, often repeating
incidents but adding new perspectives, a total picture emerges. The
result is a beautifully passionate first novel...(Library Journal,
Thomas L. Kilpatrick)
You may also want to try books by these authors:
Andrea Barrett
A. S. Byatt
Doris Lessing
Carol Shields
Anita Shreve
Fay Weldon
Hope this helps! Let us know if we can do anything else for you.
Michele R. Brown
Reference Librarian
_________________________________________________________________________________
Posted - 07/01/2008 : 3:20:45 PM
If you liked The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, you might like:
First I would recommend that you read all of Barbara Kingsolver’s novels. They all have interesting stories that illuminate relationships within families, relationships between individuals and the very important relationship we all have with our environment.
The uniqueness of The Poisonwood Bible is in its theme of Westerners who fail to understand and properly react to cultures and geography very different from their own. The books on this list are novels – and one nonfiction book – that take up this theme.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
I always find it rewarding to revisit the classic. I’m always surprised at what a short novel this story of an Englishman traveling down the Congo (although the river really isn’t named) and his encounter with Kurtz, the westerner who has been undone by life in this different culture.
Fordlandia, by Eduardo Sguiglia
This brooding novel by an Argentinean writer is based on the very real project Fordlandia that Henry Ford dreamed up in 1929. It was a vast tract of land about 500 miles from the mouth of the Amazon. Ford’s goal was to produce cheap rubber for his automobile factories. The project was an unworkable plan, poorly executed that ended very badly. The novel tells the story from the point of view of an Argentinean personnel manager for the Ford project.
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
This historical novel sets three groups in conflict: Rum smugglers from the Isle of Man whose confiscated ship is sold to two English eccentrics; the two English passengers are a clergyman who believes Tasmania is the original Garden of Eden and his traveling partner who has sinister theories about the races of mankind. The third group of people is the Tasmanians whose story is told by the aboriginal Peevey.
The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason.
In 1886 a shy, middle-aged piano tuner named Edgar Drake receives an unusual commission from the British War Office: to travel to the remote jungles of northeast Burma and there repair a rare piano belonging to an eccentric army surgeon who has proven mysteriously indispensable to the imperial design. Drake’s journey through Burma enmeshes him in colonial intrigue and an alien culture he finds compelling.
At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen
Set in the South American jungle, this thriller follows the clash between two misplaced gringos--one who has come to convert the Indians to Christianity, and one who has been hired to kill them.
Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish by Richard Flanagan
This historical novel recounts in harrowing detail the rise and fall of the penal colony on Sarah Island. It’s a story within a story. A contemporary Tasmanian creator of fake antiques finds a manuscript of a convict who gets in the good graces of the Sarah Island surgeon by painting scientific illustrations of the native fish.
The Mosquito Coast: A Novel by Paul Theroux
Allie Fox is a husband and father of four who has grand ideas for inventions and for radical social change. He moves his family to Central America to found a utopian society. His plans work and the community prospers for a while, but pride is the snake in this Eden. The downfall is tragic. This was made into a very good film that starred Harrison Ford and was Butterfly McQueen’s last film.
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles.
This classic novel explores the ways in which three American travelers misinterpret the people and culture of North Africa and how this lack of perception destroys them. The book was first published in 1949, but is quite relevant today.
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
This powerful novel is set in the state of Tabasco in Mexico during the 1930s, a time when the Mexican government strove to suppress the Catholic Church. The persecution was especially severe in the province of Tabasco, where the anti-clerical governor Tomás Garrido Canabal succeeded in closing all the churches in the state; forcing the priests to marry and give up their gowns. The main character is a priest with many sins of his own who refuses to renounce his vows and hide from the police lieutenant who is trying to track him down.
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
If you are interested in reading a nonfiction book about colonial Congo this would be an excellent choice. The factual details of the devastation of African peoples caused by the western world’s search for more and more wild rubber are absolutely horrific. The terrible colonial exploitation of the Congo was the basis for Conrad’s novel.
