This definitely was a book that left me affected for a long time afterward. The characters were so well developed that even after I was finished with the book, I thought about them in the way that you wonder about people you grew up with or family you haven’t seen in a while. Some other people have criticized the dysfunction portrayed in the book. There is plenty, to be sure, but the book immersed me completely in this foreign place, in the lives of missionaries who I normally would have felt little kinship with, and made me want to know more. Barbara Kingsolver is unquestionably one of my favorite contemporary writers, and this book is so unlike her others. I didn’t expect to like it, but instead I devoured the entire gigantic volume and wished there was more when I was through.