Customer Reviews
fantastic - By: C. williams, 21 Jun 2008 
getting into the book can take awhile but once your in you cant stop, read the whole book in 10 days
Brilliant - Colonialism & Humanity laid bare - By: G. Grech, 22 May 2008 Came across this book through another bood I'd read re the Congo & decided to give it a go. It was unputdownable. A story told through the eys of the 4 girls & their mother about their father's zealous Baptist mission to save the people of the Congo. The book encapsulates everything which is wrong with organised religion & significantly the flaws in colonial & post-colonial foreign policy. The fact that it achieves alll of this without providing a moral lecture makes it alll the more brilliant.
The story traces the pre-independence days & the post independence days & the battle for the "modern" white missionaries to survive in the primitive Congo a place which asks them to convert when what they have been sent there to do is to convert the Congo.
Your emotions for the protagonists vary from warmth & empathy to despising their very actions. It's a story that has no Hollywood ending in which good triumphs over evil because in the Congo there are varying degrees of good & varying degrees of evil & what is good now may be evil at another time.
Lovely! - By: H. Flynn, 09 Apr 2008 This is one of those books that i've had on my shelf for an age & everytime I attempt to read it I just can't get into it. Luckily I tried again recently & I am so thankful that I did.
What a lovely book. Please read this!
The only judgement is that it reallly could have ended 3/4 of the way through, it seemed that it was merging into another book altogether towards the end. But nontheless I rate this very highly & it's definitely a book, & there are not many, that I will read several times throughout my life.
Original, intelligent page-turner - By: Four Violets, 08 Mar 2008 
A novel which is based around the Belgian Congo & its fight for independence could lapse into dryness & politics. At times, especiallly in the second half, this book does. However, family dynamics among the four daughters of bigoted missionary Nathan Price & his increasingly rebellious wife are what keeps the pages turning. Horror & humour are nicely balanced. From early on we learn that one of the daughters will not survive the dangers of the jungle. Which one it will be; & the story of how the other members of the family survive into the future, is intriguing enough for this very long book to be read in a very short time.
They say that every home should have a bible... - By: Catalina Cosafina, 05 Mar 2008 ... & in my opinion it should be this one. The characterisation, the concepts, the beautiful structure of the book make it one (of, now, three) that I would have to take if stranded on a desert island.
