A while back my book club read and loved The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. And when I say loved, I mean that almost the entire club would agree that it was the best book we've read in our three years together. We spent two entire meetings discussing this book because we couldn't possibly cram it all into one. We talked about the characters and how real they all seemed, the tragic history of the Congo, and the 40+ years of "life" in the book. We shared with each other our love and admiration for certain characters and our hatred of others...and there was shouting involved when one gal admired the most hated character in the book.
When it came time to nominate new books to read, one book received unanimous votes: The Bean Trees. The gal who nominated it chose it simply because it was written by Barbara Kingsolver, and the rest of us agreed that was reason enough. We were all really looking forward to immersing ourselves in another fantastic novel.The Bean Trees is a lovely book. The characters are completely believable. They could be your neighbors, your friends, strangers on the street. Reading their dialogue was like having a conversation --- things just flowed along. Kingsolver's use of language to describe her settings is very evocative. We could SEE the unusual rock formations with Taylor, SMELL the rain on the dessert with Mattie, TASTE the hot salsa served by LuAnn. That imagery was very reminiscent of The Poisonwood Bible (even though the settings themselves couldn't be more different).
All in all, we agreed that The Bean Trees is a good book. But still, everyone was a bit disappointed.
You see, our love of The Poisonwood Bible jaded us. Our expectations going into The Bean Trees were very high --- probably too high --- and I don't think there was any way for an "ordinary" book to meet them.
The Poisonwood Bible follows its characters and setting over a 40-year period. The voice of each of the five narrators changes and grows as the story progresses. By the end, you feel as if these are real people living somewhere in the real world. And although the characters in The Bean Trees are genuine and easy to relate to, you simply don't get to know them well enough; there is only one narrator, one perspective, and not a great deal of introspection.
There are some similar themes in the two books --- family, acceptance, prejudice, responsibility --- but they are handled differently. The Bean Trees tends to skim over the truly heartbreaking events in the lives of the characters, allowing them to deal with most of the unpleasantness "off the page." The Poisonwood Bible isn't so gentle with its readers.
Kingsolver's writing style was consistent in both books, and we found that very rewarding. It was the depth of the novel --- the layers of characters, setting, and imagery --- that we missed. Would we still recommend The Bean Trees? Yes, we agreed that we would. However we'd follow up that recommendation with this comment: Read it for its own merits, and don't expect it to compare to with The Poisonwood Bible.
---Heather Johnson
