Grace Webb’s Reviews > The Poisonwood Bible > Status Update
Grace Webb
is on page 396 of 546
Until that moment I'd always believed I could still go home and pretend the Congo never happened. The misery, the hunt, the ants, the embarrassments of all we saw and endured-those were just stories I would tell someday with a laugh and a toss of my hair, when Africa was faraway and make-believe like the people in history books.
— 7 hours, 5 min ago
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Grace Webb
is on page 412 of 546
How can I ever love anyone now but Anatole? Who else could make the colors of the aurora borealis rise off my skin where he strokes my forearm? Or send needles of ice tinkling blue through my brain when he looks in my eyes?
When he’s gone away for a night or two, my thirst is inconsolable. When he comes back, I drink every kiss down to its end and still my mouth aches like a dry cave.
— 6 hours, 14 min ago
When he’s gone away for a night or two, my thirst is inconsolable. When he comes back, I drink every kiss down to its end and still my mouth aches like a dry cave.
Grace Webb
is on page 343 of 546
As Anatole says, if you look hard enough you can always see reasons, but you'll go crazy if you think it's all punishment for your sins. I see that plainly when I look at my parents. God doesn't need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
— Jun 28, 2026 06:54PM
Grace Webb
is on page 317 of 546
I reached out and clung for life with my good left hand like a claw, grasping at moving legs to raise myself from the dirt. Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. That is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom.
— Jun 27, 2026 07:29PM
Grace Webb
is on page 288 of 546
Don’t let it get me down? Man, oh man! I always wanted to be the belle of the ball, but, jeepers, is this ever the wrong ball.
But I won’t tell her. I prefer to remain anomalous.
— Jun 27, 2026 04:50PM
But I won’t tell her. I prefer to remain anomalous.
Grace Webb
is on page 258 of 546
Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.
I’d noticed Congolese men didn’t treat even their own wives and daughters as if they were very sensible or important. Though as far as I could see the wives and daughters did just about all the work.
— Jun 27, 2026 02:39PM
I’d noticed Congolese men didn’t treat even their own wives and daughters as if they were very sensible or important. Though as far as I could see the wives and daughters did just about all the work.
Grace Webb
is on page 205 of 546
He came home with a crescent-shaped scar on his temple, seriously weakened vision in his left eye, and a suspicion of his own cowardice from which he could never recover. His first words to me were to speak of how fiercely he felt the eye of God upon him. He pulled away from my kiss and my teasing touch, demanding, "Can't you understand the Lord is watching us?"
— Jun 27, 2026 10:57AM
Grace Webb
is on page 116 of 546
It is true I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.
He often says he views himself as the captain of a sinking mess of female minds. I know he must find me tiresome, yet still I like spending time with my father very much more than I like doing anything else.
Oh, little beast, little favorite. Can’t you see I died as well?
— Jun 25, 2026 06:31PM
He often says he views himself as the captain of a sinking mess of female minds. I know he must find me tiresome, yet still I like spending time with my father very much more than I like doing anything else.
Oh, little beast, little favorite. Can’t you see I died as well?
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7 hours, 5 min ago
"She wasn't baptized yet," he said. I looked up when he said this, startled by such a pathetically inadequate observation. Was that really what mattered to him right now—the condition of Ruth May's soul?
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In our house in Bethlehem I used to stand outside the bathroom door, where I could see the two of them in the mirror. Mother singing soft questions and kissing her answers into the tiny, outstretched palms. Adah and I were nine then, too old to be jealous of a baby, but still I had to wonder if she had ever loved me that much. With twins, she could only have loved each of us by half. And Adah was the one who required more of her.
As she dried the limp blond hair with a towel, she leaned in close, inhaling the scent of my sister's scalp. I felt invisible.
Africa swallowed the conqueror’s music and sang a new song of her own.
With no men around, everyone was surprisingly lighthearted.
My mind ached like a broken bone as I struggled to stand in the new place I found myself. I wouldn’t see my baby sister again, this I knew. But I hadn’t yet considered the loss of my father.
It is surprising how my mother and father hardened so differently, when they turned to stone.
How could I follow my mother out of here now, and run away from what we’d done? But after what we’d done, how could I stay?
The rain turned to ice as it lashed my arms. The trees began to burn with a pinkish aura that soothed my eyes. I lost one of my shoes in the mud, and failed to care. Then I lost the other.
