I just finished Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s actually taken me about six months to read. I bought it last June and read a chapter but was reading so many short stories at the time the sheer volume of Demon Copperhead felt too weighty. I then took it on holiday but it didn’t quite fit with the Cotes D’Azur vibes and I wanted an easier partner to my sun lounger and chilled rose. So, it sat in my TBR next to my side of the bed waiting… along with three other award-winners The Magician by Colm Toibin, Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson and The Promise by Damon Galgut (who knows when I’ll get onto these… maybe in 2025?)
Anyway, I’m setting a long-winded scene as when I eventually did get back to Demon Copperhead I STILL struggled to get going but I persisted. I think I gave it some welly due to the amount of people who told me they loved it. It’s the Woman’s Prize 2023 winner and won a Pulitzer Prize so I felt I couldn’t give up on this book. Plus, more importantly than prizes, it has all the themes I enjoy. It’s written through the eyes of a young boy and tackles a broken childhood against this backdrop of poverty and drug addiction, set in rural Virginia, USA.
But I did struggle to get into the first 40-50 pages and I think it’s due to the typeface being so teeny tiny, which combined with the density of the sentences and the weight of 560 pages - it’s not a quick, lazy read. Faber please enlarge the font!
However… I persevered and I was rewarded. Demon overcomes almost unsurmountable adversity and comes out good (I’m not giving spoilers).
It’s a BRILLIANT book.
Demon Copperhead is a wonderful character – he’s up there with the classics like Huckleberry Finn. He’s born in trailer to a junkie young mother. When she dies and he’s orphaned he becomes a ward of state and his life takes a series of difficult and rollercoaster turns.
Demon is streetwise, funny, cocky, and a real survivor – he has to be. If you like a book with a strong voice – Demon’s voice is brilliant. He’s always on a mission – whether it’s for food, a place to call home, surviving high school, scoring or finding somewhere to have sex with his girlfriend.
Demon Copperhead is a retelling of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and Kingsolver is a natural partner to Dickens and has always covered big social, political and environmental issues in her work. In this book, Barbara Kingsolver lays bare the poverty and drug crisis. Demon is surviving against the odds. The novel is an assault of bad things happening and I found it gruelling at times, but Demon is carries it off. He closely observes the world around him and has a take on everything and this gives the book the energy and bounce that staves off the misery and bleakness. The book is peppered with great names - Maggot, Swap-Out, Mr Golly and Fast Forward and places like Creaky Farm and the Devil’s Bathtub.
It opens with a powerful visual of Demon being born, ‘still inside the fetus ziplock’, ‘a baggie birth’. The novel is written through the eyes of Demon. On a sentence level Kingsolver is incredible and there are so many powerful descriptions. There is the ‘dog-breath air of late summer’. One of my favourites: ‘Aunts standing close in the kitchen like cigarettes in the pack, uncles splayed on furniture like butts in the ashtray.’
Death is never far away. Images of death are pieced through the novel reminding the reader that Demon’s life is precarious. For example, “Two dead wasps lay on the sill with their heads close together like a tiny murder-suicide.”
There are good people who look out for him and the kindly Peggot family give the story some hope.
“I tried to keep my eyes open and channel June Peggot parallel parking outside the Atlanta Starbucks. I’m in awe of that manoeuvre to this day. Men have married women for less reason.”
Demon’s verdict is that “a kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing”. And yes, you couldn’t not agree with this statement after finishing Demon Copperhead.
Read it if you enjoyed The Goldfinch and Shuggie Bain or loved the TV shows Ozark or Boy Swallows Universe
Teeny weeny font!
Have you read it? Let me know