Friday Favorites: The Poisonwood Bible

On Fridays I post a little shout out to one of my favorite books and explain why I love it so much. It gives me the chance to fangirl over books I never reviewed on this blog and lets me post about some not necessarily YA books I love.

Which book?
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

Genre?
Fiction

Summary? (From GoodReads)
Told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959,The Poisonwood Bible is the story of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. They carry with them all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil.

When did I first read it?
High school

Why did I first read it?
I don’t really remember. I think someone lent it to me? Or maybe I read it for a book club?

What did I think about it then?
I fell completely and totally in love with the writing. Obviously I’d read stuff by female authors before, but Kingsolver was the one who really brought it home to me that women could write just as well as the men we were studying in my English class. And could write better than them, actually. Plus, the setting was just so breathtakingly vivid—1960s Belgian Congo. I didn’t know the country even existed, let alone what went on there, so this book opened my eyes to a whole new world and made me realize that there's more to history than what I read in my history textbook.

What do I think about it now?
Even after reading most of Kingsolver’s other books, The Poisonwood Bible is still my favorite. I don’t know—it just grabs me by the heart every single time I read it. It’s one of those books that I can’t reread too often, because of the emotional wringer it puts me through, but every time I finish it, I’m reminded of just how worth it it is.

Have you read this book? What did you think?