It might first seem that Kingsolver's choice of twins as a literary device is a clichéd mistake. It begins more or less with the family's journey to the Congo. The first half of The Poisonwood Bible is excellent. The second, what remains of the book, is a disappointment and a prolonged continuation of a story the point of which was made long before.

The first of these, the first half or so of the book, is a must-read. The Poisonwood Bible, with two of its characters, Adah and Leah, being twins, itself exhibits some of the same properties that draw authors to that subject: it is in many ways two books bound together, somehow similar and more or less continuous, yet still disjointed.

Perhaps this provides too much of a temptation for an author to mirror social issues, to reflect a group of individuals which are living in an identical environment while exploring the implications of their differences. Identical twins, indistinguishable genetically, nevertheless grow to become different, each furthering his/her uniqueness, yet always remaining in some ways identical to the other. Perhaps it's because twins provide a good paradigm for society. Barbara Kingsolver's latest, The Poisonwood Bible, carries on this trend with a story of a Baptist missionary family in the Congo in the 1950's. Twins showed up in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. What is it about the subject of twins that make them such a common subject for authors? Toni Morrison's recent novel centered around twins. Review Copyright © 2000 Garret Wilson - Janu5:20 p.m. ☰ Review: The Poisonwood Bible Title The Poisonwood Bible Author Barbara Kingsolver Publisher HarperPerennial, New York, 1999 ISBN 0-06-093053 Review: The Poisonwood Bible Garret Wilson

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