Demon Copperhead: A Novel

The coal-filled mountains of Appalachia cast darkness on the small towns dotted throughout the eastern us. The book begins as the main character, Demon, starts to tell his story, which is a twisting path at the bottom of the mountain that begins interjectory not up the mountain but down into the darkness where spiderwebs of misfortune are found deep in the coal mines. Demon’s childhood is a spiral of terrible circumstances and an environment accompanied by adults who make poor decisions in a community that thrives on coal and drugs (both legal and illegal.) Demon, throughout his childhood, is raised by his young mother, a drug addict, and his neighbors, the Peggots, who assist in trying to keep Demon on a straight path as they deal with the same institutional issues living in the mountaintop small-town Appalachia, drug addiction, crime, poverty, and a poor economy. “The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.” Demon’s mother soon marries a man called Stoner, who is abusive to both Demon and his mother; during their marriage, Demon’s mother relapses, and Demon and Stoner struggle as Demon attempts to call for help and Stoner attempts to stop him, and Demon loses his mother and his unborn sibling. After his mother’s death, he’s given to a foster home where he is worked like hired help on a tobacco farm, echoing the horribleness of how the American foster system can harm a child. Demon learns the ins and outs of the family on this farm through his peers getting into trouble, lusting for a good meal, and starting to take drugs for fun. Eventually, Demon, as he ages and moves to another foster family who struggles in the poverty of Appalachia, Demon runs away to his grandmother’s house in Murder Valley, Tennessee. On his trip, he meets a preacher, gets his money stolen by a prostitute, and sleeps in a barn. Eventually, he meets Betsy Woodall and her disabled brother Dick who get Demon back in shape and, using her connections, gets him a foster home with a football coach. Demon’s problems for a short while disappear, as he starts school again, taking special classes in art and getting by in other courses, but eventually, the freedom of youth escapes him, and he spirals back down, even as he’s the star player a football team the pinnacle of any small town. Demon eventually gets injured and addicted to oxicotten on a legal script that doctors at the time were pushing to everyone to deal with pain, knowing the drug was addictive; in doing so, Demon falls for a girl, Dori, who had her own addiction issues and Demon’s life course even when going well for just a few short years spirals again. “I said probably they were just scared he was going to put ideas in our heads.” She smiled. “Imagine that. A teacher, putting ideas in kids’ heads.” The ending is not a tragic blunder about addiction and poverty but a tour of struggle and pain as Demon grows and fails and picks himself up, eventually using his artistic skills to slowly build a world around him that may give him enough structure to break a cycle that many fail to do. Eventually, Demon realizes the few people close to him who constantly annoyed him were the very few people that only wanted Demon Copperhead to stand tall and be the better person he deserved to be. “I can still feel in my bones how being mad was the one thing holding me together.” The book’s plot is based on a request given to Demon during his struggles and is only released at the end. Mrs. Kingsolver’s writing style has a tone and character not seen in writing, often using appropriate slang and terms in the Appalachian area. Demon’s voice, written by Mrs. Kingsolver, is unique and baked in with a sincerity of hard luck and oppression not often found in modern literary writing. The book was hard to put down and flowed well chapter into the chapter as Demon continued to be put into horrible situations by those who were supposed to take care of him. At times, during the parts of the story about addiction and drugs, I would step away from the book because the trauma, pain, and hopelessness portrayed in the words and mood can become very real. These are all complex topics to read and, at times, to enjoy, but Mrs. Kingsolver provides the proper framing in Demon’s voice and the appropriate amount of darkness and light to keep the pages turning, never letting the pace or tone become too much for the reader. I would consider adding this book to every high school-required reading list. Demon Copperhead was the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2023, was named “10 best books of 2022” by the NYT and Washington Post, and shared the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Hernan Diaz’s book Trust. This was the first time the prize was split. The novel has lingered on the fringes of books I wanted to read. I picked it up as part of my book club reads for 2024, and I’m glad I did. I would recommend it to anyone, as it features superior prose, various authentic characters, and a modern setting with hundreds of tragedies, comedies, and dramas that must be told. Word of note, this book can get dark and deals with modern-day problems that may trigger emotions and people impacted in such situations.

DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver is an absolutely brilliant feat of storytelling. As someone who loves coming-of-age narratives, Appalachian settings, and offbeat, unwanted main characters with a fiery spirit, this book hit every note perfectly for me. Kingsolver, one of my all-time favorite authors, accomplishes something truly remarkable in this novel—transposing a Victorian epic (DAVID COPPERFIELD) into the contemporary American South with a voice that is raw, hilarious, heartbreaking, and fiercely American. Her ability to channel Demon’s young, smart-mouthed, sharp-witted perspective is nothing short of astonishing. As a classic literature junkie, I appreciated the homage to Dickens—and now I feel like I have to read David Copperfield soon. Some readers have mentioned that the ending felt predictable, but I personally found it satisfying. After such a tumultuous journey, I welcomed the resolution with open arms. In a time when “Americanness” can feel like a fraught or polarizing concept, Demon Copperhead gave me that rare, innocent, deeply human version of it—equal parts painful and hopeful. I don't often re-read books, Kingsolver has proved me a liar now twice. Like THE POISONWOOD BIBLE, this is one I know I’ll return to. Kingsolver continues to prove that she can take on any voice, any place, and any era—and do it with compassion, intelligence, and unforgettable prose.

Title of Review: Heartbreaking & Fantastic Title: Demon Copperhead Author: Barbara Kingsolver Date Purchased: 14 June 2023 Amount Paid: $15.99 Page number: 556 pages Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Coming of Age Date of Review: 29 July 2024 Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: 2023 This was a book I read for my local book club. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead tells the story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a single-wide trailer. With no assets beyond his deceased father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a sharp wit, and a fierce survival instinct, Demon navigates the modern challenges of foster care, child labor, failing schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and devastating losses. Narrated in his own unflinching voice, Demon grapples with his invisibility in a culture that has largely abandoned rural communities. Inspired by Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, which drew from Dickens' own experiences with institutional poverty, Barbara Kingsolver transposes a Victorian epic to the contemporary American South. She channels Dickens' anger, compassion, and faith in storytelling's transformative power to give voice to a new generation of lost boys and those born into beautiful yet cursed places they can't imagine leaving. I think Kingsolver did a great job of telling the stories of damaged kids. I loved this book. Though it was hard to read in places—heartbreaking and sad—it was also heartwarming. The writing was superb, and the story captivated me from start to finish. It examined critical social issues while educating and showcasing the resilience of the human spirit.

When, at the age of 15, I first read David Copperfield, Charles Dickens’ classic novel of the protagonist’s struggle to rise above child poverty in a society seemingly structured to keep him poor, it was the first book that made me tear up at the end, that glorious end with the angelic Agnes ever “pointing upward.” I wasn’t sure that Barbara Kingsolver’s DemonCopperhead could possibly elicit anything like that response from my jaded, seen-it-all-before, read-it-all-before consciousness. Re-imagining the quintessentially British Dickens’ nineteenth-century story as a twenty-first century slice of American Appalachian life? How’s that likely to work? Well, of course, it was likely to bomb spectacularly. But instead, what I found from the book’s very first paragraph was a voice that explodes off the page with both confidence and world-weariness, with stoicism and self-knowledge, with everything the character is going to exhibit in the rest of this blockbuster of a novel. Dickens’ David famously opens with, “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” By contrast, Kingsolver’s Copperhead (whose real name is Damon Fields, but he has red hair, so…) opens with, “First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch and they’ve always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let’s just say out of it.” In this life, you make your own choices, and if you’re going to get anywhere, and your mother is in and out of rehab constantly, you have to do it yourself, Damon tells you at the beginning. You think there’s going to be a hero in your life? Think again. There’s just you, trying to make your way in a world that’s stacked against you. Here’s a voice that, in its tone of genuine down-home rural Americanism sounds a lot more like Huck Finn than anybody in Dickens. Like Huck, he has a memorable way of putting things in his colorful American vernacular: He’s “the Eagle Scout of trailer trash,” he tells us at one point. And I don’t mean to say that you must be familiar with David Copperfield to enjoy Demon Copperhead. You can follow the plot, empathize with the characters and absorb the themes of Kingsolver’s book without ever having heard of Dickens. But it does add something to the overall experience of the book if you know the Copperfield story. In particular, there’s a bit of fun for readers when they can recognize by name a Kingsolvian character intended to parallel a Dickensian one. Thus, when Damon’s abusive stepfather bears the name of “Stoner,” it’s easy to see the connection with David’s equally cruel stepfather, whose name happens to be “Murdstone.” Damon’s kind neighbors, the Peggots, clearly recall David’s friends the Peggottys and Clara Peggoty, David’s early nurse and lifelong friend. Dickens’ charming and narcissistic James Steerforth, who for a while promises to be that “hero of my own life” David looks forward to in his opening sentence, finds his counterpoint in Kingsolver’s Sterling Ford, nicknamed Fast Forward, star quarterback on the high school football team and, for awhile, Damon’s idol. Copperfield’s “child wife” Dora Spenlowe is echoed in Kingsolver’s Dori, and when Damon falls for his needy, childish Dori you don’t have to remember David Copperfield to know that relationship is going to be a disaster, but it helps. Occasionally Kingsolver’s parallel characters are direct mirror images of Dickens’, as in the case of Damon’s grandmother Betsy and her eccentric friend Mr. Dick, who liked flying kites, mirroring David’s great-aunt Betsy and her eccentric friend Mr. Dick who also liked flying kites. Sometimes there’s more of a difference: Damon’s short-term foster father Mr. McCobb has a few things in common with David’s Mr. Micawber, lack of steady employment and perpetual new schemes to get rich among them, but Micawber is a well-meaning screwup, while McCobb is just trying to take advantage of the system. And Dickens’ Uriah Heep is a far more insidious villain than Kingsolver’s assistant coach U-Haul Pyles, whose downfall is far less precipitous than Heep’s in Dickens. And then there is “Angus” Winfield, daughter of the high school football coach and Damon’s foster-sister during the best and worst years of his life, who clearly parallels David’s guardian angel, Agnes Wickfield, and who you know from the first is going to be a major influence in Damon’s life. Of course, knowing Dickens gives you an idea of the role these characters are going to play in the story. But the plot of Demon Copperhead is not therefore predictable, as Kingsolver translates these characters’ motivations and effects on the protagonist into a completely different milieu of time and place. Ultimately, what’s important about the influence of Dickens on Kingsolver’s book is not the superficial correspondences of plot or character, but rather their very significant agreement in terms of theme and authorial intent. In an afterword to her novel, Kingsolver writes, “I’m grateful to Charles Dickens for writing David Copperfield, his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society. Those problems are still with us. In adapting his novel to my own place and time, working for years with his outrage, inventiveness, and empathy at my elbow, I’ve come to think of him as my genius friend.” It is precisely those social evils that Kingsolver has directly in her sites in this novel: The institutional poverty of former coal-mining areas of her native Appalachia; the effects of that poverty on children, especially children whose parents have been victims of that poverty and are dead or imprisoned. She attacks the ineptitude and bureaucracy of child welfare services, the abuse of the system of foster care that allows people like Damon’s foster parents to take children solely for the sake of taking the monthly support money, or for gaining slave labor like the tobacco farmer who first fosters Damon. She attacks a justice system that will accept the testimony of an abusive stepfather rather than the word of the abused child. But more than anything else she attacks the opioid crisis. Damon, who has a brief period when it seems he may escape the cesspool of his luckless life through success on the gridiron as a high school football star, has a terrible knee injury for which he is prescribed opioid pain relievers to which he becomes hopelessly addicted, and Kingsolver’s indictment of the doctors, salesmen, druggists, and especially the Sackler-owned Purdue Pharma are is merciless in the novel. It truly seems like there is no way out for Damon—but as David Copperfield had a talent in writing that finally helped pull him out of poverty, the fact that Damon has a talent for drawing—all he has left after football—does give him a ray of hope. I won’t spoil the end by telling you whether he’s able to use it. Thus Kingsolver is not simply the heir of Dickens in recasting his most personal novel; she is more importantly the spiritual heir of Dickens’ novel of social criticism, something you don’t see much of any more. Where is Dickens today? Where are the Zolas? The Sinclair Lewises? The John Steinbecks? Gone. But we’ve still got Barbara Kingsolver.

Demon Copperhead was a great read. I highly recommend it, thought provoking, really heartbreaking at times also a bit depressing but so well written, seriously a page turner.

I have not read David Copperfield. So to me this was a fresh, inventive and moving original story. Much of the poverty or struggles in the Appalachia coal country has melted into quick cliches and knowing looks. Here Kingsolver puts not just a human face but the full force of her sense of humanity into a very moving story. Demon Copperhead is our narrator. Kingsolver gives him great gifts of insight, wit along with talents in art and sports to give him a fighting chance to survive a horrible childhood. Without this Demon wouldn't survive or be able to tell us the full story of himself and those around him. The book is long and the first half is so painful that I began to worry if I could finish. But Demon is charming and his life takes several turns that reward the reader. Through is eyes and life we see what there is to love about Appalachia in Lee County Virginia as much as what has gone so badly wrong. The issues of fentanyl addiction destroying so much of people's lives is very much apart of the story as is the long era of abusing all kinds of drugs along with alcohol and the lack of positive alternatives in school or community and the absence of treatment. Kingsolver does an amazing job bringing all of this together in a sympathetic but also realistic fashion. This book is well reviewed as it should be. There is a narrative with meaning, convincing characters with depth and intelligent reflection of what is hurting communities and families. She is so adept and quick to point out contradictions of all kinds. Nothing superficial here and well worth time and effort. Superb writing.

An engrossing story of life in Appalachia with vivid characters and told with such warmth for those characters. Kingsolver is such a skilled and empathetic writer. Never preachy, but messages received.

I get it. I really do. Barbara Kingsolver's modern envisioning of David Copperfield comes in the form Demon Copperhead. Like David Copperfield, Demon Copperhead takes a look at orphans and the services that are provided and fail them. David Copperfield isn't the only inspiration, this book will give many vibes similar to Beth Mercy's Dopesick as well. That is to say, this is bleak. And it's never not bleak. Demon is born into poverty, and we see that poverty play out in the most grim of ways. Overdoses, uncaring foster parents, and exploitive child work practices all become mere backdrops. What first becomes harsh and shocking, soon numbs your senses. Kingsolver builds the most disturbing images and then somehow beats you down by showing you something equally grotesque. Characters make bad decision after bad decision, heroes will fail you, and our main character Demon is on the receiving end of all of it. It's overwhelming. And fascinating. For the first 300 pages, this was the car crash you rubberneck. But as Demon starts to take on his own bad decisions, I felt weary. The next 250 pages remain interesting, but I was battered. What doesn't help is the text continues to sprawl out, introducing character after character, while looping back to characters you once thought were forgotten. On one hand, it's amazing Kingsolver can weave so many threads, on another, you will feel exhausted by both the adventure and the scope. But this isn't a novel written for enjoyment. Irredeemable is the goal. Hope happens with slivers of sunlight only to be snuffed out moments later. The one bright spot comes in the form of a character we meet quite a bit into the text, Angus. The bond between Angus and Demon is one that really propelled me forward. And even when she exits the text, you know her return is inevitable. She really is the bond that holds the story together because once Demon starts making poor actions, the momentum of the text shifts. It remains fascinating, but with so much grim and grime, I found the whole experience to be tough. Did I enjoy it? That's a stretch. Did I find it admirable and fascinating? Absolutely. So like I said at the beginning, I get. I really do. The writing is gorgeous and the imagery that Kingsolver builds to these grim realities is virtually unparallel. There's absolute no surprise it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. But you have to ready yourself because both the content and the sheer size will test your volition.