Poison Wood Bible #4
After having made my way past the exodus of Africa in the story I have come to the realization that this story ended half way through telling it. There are two hundred pages of nothing following the girls leaving Africa. I understand Kingsolver is attempting to wrap the character lines up and make everything neat and tidy, but that does not need to be done in such detail. It is ironic that what caused this story to putter out in the end was the over use of detail while throughout it was the lack there of that turned me away from it. The way the book needed to end was a quick chapter on each girl quickly describing what happened to them after. There was no need to spend several chapters laying out every grain of sand these girls walked over in the years after Africa. I spent my time wondering when the next big event would occur and was severely dissatisfied with the way she chose to wrap it all up.
One of the greatest endings to a novel ever is what John Steinbeck did in Grapes of Wraith. He so brilliantly brought you along this journey allowing you to become attached to the characters leading you as the reader to the family’s last stand and just ends it. Everything in that one moment as the daughter breast feeds the old seems to resolve itself by allowing the reader to take the final information given and come up with how each character made out in the end. The Poisonwood Bible needed that type of hard hitting final moments to wrap up the story line. I am not saying Kingsolver’s final chapter is not powerful because it is I’m saying that moment needed to come quicker. That final chapter by Ruth May needed to follow in the next hundred pages at most the exodus of Africa. The dragging out the ending to that moment made you wonder what’s the point why can’t this story be over the entire plot set up from the beginning was Africa why does nearly half the book delve into detail about the time after the Congo it puzzled me. Had the final chapter have come sooner I would say this book saved itself in the end, but instead I would say it ruined the story by dragging it out for so long I became frustrated that all the sudden the meaningless stuff was so jammed with detail it yet when she needed it most it was no where to be found.
One of the greatest endings to a novel ever is what John Steinbeck did in Grapes of Wraith. He so brilliantly brought you along this journey allowing you to become attached to the characters leading you as the reader to the family’s last stand and just ends it. Everything in that one moment as the daughter breast feeds the old seems to resolve itself by allowing the reader to take the final information given and come up with how each character made out in the end. The Poisonwood Bible needed that type of hard hitting final moments to wrap up the story line. I am not saying Kingsolver’s final chapter is not powerful because it is I’m saying that moment needed to come quicker. That final chapter by Ruth May needed to follow in the next hundred pages at most the exodus of Africa. The dragging out the ending to that moment made you wonder what’s the point why can’t this story be over the entire plot set up from the beginning was Africa why does nearly half the book delve into detail about the time after the Congo it puzzled me. Had the final chapter have come sooner I would say this book saved itself in the end, but instead I would say it ruined the story by dragging it out for so long I became frustrated that all the sudden the meaningless stuff was so jammed with detail it yet when she needed it most it was no where to be found.
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