Poison Wood Bible #3

Something that I have noticed while reading this novel is the lack of hard detail and description. For a story that spans so many months in the Congo, it sounds like the events are all happening in a week as the author neglects to spend time describing their time rather just says the family is there. For example, why is there never a moment where we get to experience a church service in the Congo why does Kingsolver choose to just skip over them by saying the family goes every Sunday and Anatole translates the sermons to the people. For something so important to the story, you would think at least once the reader would get the chance to experience a sermon through heavy detail and imagery otherwise it feels she is writing just to fill up pages. Key points in the story need more attention or what makes it worth reading. Like Ruth May dying that sparked so much development yet, she died over the course of two sentences and was never touched on again even though for the last three hundred pages Kingsolver was alluding to her death by Green Mamba and not one character mentions the irony in how she went out. Reading the book makes the story sound like a summary of events rather than actually happening at that moment. It feels like the characters are speaking in present tense about past events and just trying to quickly get through the story. I want to read a book that is interesting even in the dull moments and this book is just lacking that because you get no true sense of what really happened those years in the Congo. As readers, we spent years in that small village in the middle of the jungle yet I doubt anyone of us could draw a map of it or give the slightest insight on how it was laid out because it is never described to us rather just mentioned over and over again in this repetitive sense. The style of writing reminds me of someone who has little confidence in what they are writing and just trying to get the story out any way they can in Kingsolver's case that is rushing the storyline to the point you aren't excited or interested by it anymore. A neat trick she uses to sort of get around her lack of explanation is by throwing in biblical story references to describe situations.  This works as she created characters who are so heavily influenced by the Bible in their daily lives however for those reading who are not familiar with the details of these narratives there is nothing to relate it to you're still just as lost and if anything more confused.  One piece of the story where this lack of detail is overwhelmingly clear is when the ants come. One minute there are no ants the next ants flood the village but that is all we know because suddenly the story is back to there being no ants and everything running as smooth as it can in the Congo. As a reader that's frustrating something pivotal happens and you can't say how it occurred what happened after or even what happened during you just know that it happened and must be important in some way or why warrant the mention.
If I were trying to explain this writing style quickly and to the point, I would say, "It is like someone is summarizing a story in a hurry" because simple that is what is happening. I have not read such a simply written book that somehow fakes its way into the big leagues. The only thing I can think of that allowed this book to get this far is the topic it is written on nothing sells like religion.