The Poisonwood Bible - Multiple Critical Perspectives

This is an incredible achievement, and I am sorry it took me this long to get around to reading (it first came out 20 years ago). I've read several of Kingsolver's more recent novels and consider myself a fan. While I admire this novel greatly, I have two complaints. The first is the character–or caricature–of Rachel Price, the oldest of the Price sisters and the one who seems to have been denied a brain and even a sliver of social conscience. She's both too stupid and too vile to be believed, although I get that she's meant to represent an element of society that refused to see what was going on under their noses. The second is the novel's preachiness. Kingsolver is known for her agenda-driven fiction, and I share her political point of view, but the angle here got in the way of the story sometimes (and probably made the book a lot longer than it needed to be). It reminded me that my knowledge of African history and geography is inadequate, however, and I need to remedy that.