Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Summary (from the publisher): Demon Copperhead is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It's the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.
Review: In this retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, Damon, nicknamed Demon Copperhead by his classmates, is born into generational poverty to a drug-addicted teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer. Relaying his own story in unflinching and honest prose, Demon recounts his childhood, which is one desperate leap for survival after another. Young Demon braves foster care, child labor, addiction, and numerous losses.
I feel as if I am cheating as a reader in many ways, since I have never read the Dickens work that inspired this text and thus cannot speak to how successfully Kingsolver has transposed a Victorian era novel to a modern story set in the American South. But I do know that Demon's story was a powerful one, filled with hardship and wrenching heartache for a kid without a champion. Demon is strikingly forthright and honest and makes a wonderful narrator to provide an inside look at what it's like to be born into generational poverty. It appears evident that Kingsolver has done her homework on the trials that plague the poor of Appalachia; I would not be surprised if she read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe or Dopesick by Beth Macy or others before writing this book, as the opioid epidemic plays a heavy role in the plot.
This book, with a focus on a young boy struggling to reach adulthood without parent figures, reminded me heavily of A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and also of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. But yet with more of a lesson: to have a compassion for those born into poverty and to highlight the searing devastation of opioid addiction. I did feel like this book was a bit longer than I wanted at times, but it was worth the time invested in it. Demon was such a likeable character in so many ways and his story certainly captured my attention.
Stars: 4
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