Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Demon Copperhead Reviews

• 
  Maureen

  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  
  Demon Copperhead entered the world in a single trailer, born to a single mother who hadn’t a clue how to look after him - nor did she have the means. The southern Appalachian mountains of Virginia is where he took his first breath - a place of dire poverty, though most local folk were in the same boat, so it was pretty normal. Demon’s mum though had additional problems, and that meant even less of the basic needs for the two of them. Thank God for good neighbours.
  
  I won’t go into the synopsis as this is a lengthy (over 600 pages) and eventful novel. However, this is a tale of love and the need for love, it’s about dreams and anger, hate and pain, and what really stands out is how the opioid crisis is responsible for many of those bad feelings, and demonstrates how it wrecks the lives that might otherwise have climbed out of that daily grinding poverty, perhaps realising those long held dreams and ambitions.
  
  The journey for Demon Copperhead is long and eventful, (epic is the best way to describe it). The writing is so beautiful - exquisite even, but it takes the reader to places so dark, depressing and dangerous with its intimate detail, that you wonder why you find such beauty in it. But it’s there on every page, in every event and every crisis - harrowing yet uplifting. Has to be one of the standout books of the year - it is stunning!
  
  *Thank you to Netgalley and Faber and Faber Ltd for my much appreciated ARC. I have given an honest unbiased review in exchange *
• 
  Ron Charles

  It’s barely Halloween. The ball won’t drop in Times Square for another two full months, and more good books will surely appear before the year ends. But I already know: My favorite novel of 2022 is Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead.”
  
  Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love. Damon is the only child of a teenage alcoholic — “an expert at rehab” — in southwest Virginia. He becomes aware of his status early, around the same time he gets the nickname Demon. “I was a lowlife,” he says, “born in the mobile home, so that’s like the Eagle Scout of trailer trash.” The more he grasps the connotations of words like “hick” and “redneck,” the more discouraged he becomes. “This is what I would say if I could, to all the smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes. …We can actually hear you.”
  
  Now, we can hear him.
  
  “You get to a point of not giving a damn over people thinking you’re worthless,” he says. “Mainly by getting there first yourself.”
  
  Demon is right about America’s condescending derision, but he’s wrong about his own worth. In a feat of literary alchemy, Kingsolver uses the fire of that boy’s spirit to illuminate — and singe — the darkest recesses of our country.
  
  The essential Americanness of “Demon Copperhead” feels particularly ironic given that Kingsolver has drawn her inspiration directly from one of England’s most celebrated classics: “David Copperfield,” by Charles Dickens. In a brief afterword, Kingsolver expresses her gratitude to Dickens and acknowledges....
  
  To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
  
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
• 
  Angela M

  This novel is described as a modern day version of David Copperfield, which I’ve never read. I’m generally not a fan of rewrites of classics, so if I had read it, I may not have picked this one up even though Barbara Kingsolver is such an amazing writer whose books I have loved over the years. I’m grateful to have read this novel because I would have missed out on a brilliant story - brutal, but brilliant and a character who was in my heart from the first to the last page .
  
  An addicted teenage mother, an abusive stepfather, a corrupt foster care system reeking of abuse is what Demon Copperhead endures at the young age of ten years old. Working on a tobacco farm, then with a family who has him sleeping in a dog room, hungry, taking leftovers from school lunch trays, he endures - somehow without speaking up to his case worker for fear of what his next foster situation would be. His next one turns out to be life altering in more ways than one. This is an in your face, in your gut punch, no holds barred portrayal all of that, and a stabbing expose of the opioid epidemic in Appalachia.
  
  It’s depressing and heartbreaking to read with little respite. I was drained at times . As with other books by Kingsolver, there is a social message here, but it’s not just told with statistics of addictions, deaths, but through the moving story of a character as a little boy and then as a young man, with all of the horrors he faced in between, feeling as real as it gets .
  
  
  I received a copy of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.
• 
  Liz

  I love Barbara Kingsolver, so I picked this as our book club selection. Then, I had the bright idea that since this was based on David Copperfield, I should try reading that first. 800 pages, dry as dirt, and I gave up at page 200. That had me worried. Until the first page of this book. OMG! The language! Her way with words is beyond description. I wanted to highlight multiple phrases per page. I quickly realized I’d be highlighting the whole book. I found myself getting caught up time after time by some phrase or sentence. She just tells it so you really understand something.
  This book sucked me in. Demon’s life was one long sorrowful moan. But not just his. Almost everyone in this tale has had trouble. This is a deeply depressing book. But thank heavens it ends on a note of hope for those still standing at the end.
  I was impressed that Kingsolver was able to take this re-telling of David Copperfield and make it about the opioid crisis in Appalachia. It shows that not much has changed between Victorian times and now when it comes to the disadvantaged being marginalized and ignored. It starts with an area with little on offer, government programs stretched beyond its limits and first one, then another, industry more interested in profits than people. The plot is a reminder that severe poverty isn’t just limited to the inner cities. If anything, there's as much prejudice against the “trailer trash”. “A blight on the nation…a smudge on the map.”
  I highly recommend this and it is definitely one of my favorite books of the year. I can’t wait to discuss this at book club.
• 
  Elyse Walters

  E-Book ….
  and Audiobook….(read by Charlie Thurston who was absolutely as masterful reading this monumental American epic as Barbara Kingsolver was in writing it)
  …..21 hours long and 3 minutes
  
  By now….most conscientious—attentive diligent readers have heard ‘something’ about this book — The New Oprah Pick - 560 pages long —
  Barbara Kingsolver has taken a literary classic, David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens and makes it her own.
  Set in the mountains of Southern Appalachia….(a neglected area of Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains)
  The area is home to Barbara today.
  
  A little about Barbara Kingsolver:
  ….not only is she a best selling author of America contemporary novels, nonfiction, and poetry, but she is also a freelance journalist and political activist. With skillful talent, her writing encourages a more just world….
  current social issues, environmental issues, human rights, and deeply traumatic dilemmas.
  Her protagonists tend to be resilient— surviving day-to-day struggles…..she does this with humor to lighten the tone — love — strength —and hope.
  Her storytelling — mixed with political and social passion—“hope to leave the world a little more reasonable and just”….
  are wonderfully intimate, emotional, heartbreaking and heart endearing stories.
  
  I was a huge fan of Kingsolver’s early books…”The Bean Trees”, “Animal Dreams”, and “Pigs in Heaven”, ….that took place in Arizona where she lived for many years.
  When “The Poisonwood Bible” came out in 2009….(a fairly new experience for me in styling: each character taking their turn to tell the story— felt so fresh and revolutionary to me)…..taking place in Africa. I was so taken so affected by the storytelling itself…..it’s a book that has never left me.
  But….
  I have never yet read any other book that I felt accomplished that type of narrative —(a narrative circle of family characters)….I thought it was soooo brilliant….
  yet, since 2009,
  I’ve read many more authors who adopted the TAKE TURNS styling, but for me, most of the time they have a ‘paint-by-numbers’ quality to me.
  NOT Barbara Kingsolver! For me, she was the Queen creator of unique ‘narrative-circle’. Her crafting felt inventive & primitive — fitting to the jungle setting where a Baptist preacher took his wife and four daughters.
  So….clearly “The Poisonwood Bible” is still my favorite Kingsolver book…..
  but…..”Demon Copperhead” —with a rapturous and heroically protagonist—comes in as a very close 2nd favorite.
  
  I couldn’t agree more with this statement: “Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient”.
  Demon Copperhead reflects social and political viewpoints through realistic characters. The socioeconomic messages are felt throughout….
  but…it’s the nitty-gritty-bigger-than-life-immersive storytelling— with Demon ‘telling-this story’…..looking back on his coming-of-age life….that unabashedly delves into the hearts and souls of her characters — exposing something so raw and tender. Humanity is being exposed!
  
  So….ABOUT …some of those ‘nitty-gritty’ details….
  …..Some CHARM nitty gritty’s:
  ….like Demon’s love for snicker bars, comics, and playing spitball with other orphan kids
  …..Some MAKE YOUR HEART ACHE nitty gritty’s:
  …..like being born into poverty by a teenage-single mother. Being tossed around from one Foster Care home to another, each worse than the next….
  no socks, no winter coat, lots of child labor —scrubbing and cleaning, cuttin tobacco, being called a “dead junkie’s kid”, taking crap from teachers, bullying kids, laughed at by girls, hunger….(so much hunger), opioid addiction, (damn—it was everywhere in those Appalachia mountains), ….
  Yet…..people were saying “a cripple was a punishment from God”?….. (what’s wrong with people?)
  It’s the tossing of a sentence here or there — that will spark-a-fire-in readers ‘feeling’ ANGER FOR THE CONDITIONS of life —
  
  I CAN’T IMAGINE ANY READER NOT FINDING THIS NOVEL FULLY ABSORBING—and DEEPLY AFFECTING-
  The full range of emotions are felt from birth into Demon’s adulthood.
  
  There are numerous themes and plot lines to contemplate….
  Demon’s tiny, pretty, mom, for example — she was not a bad person — she just wasn’t well. Looking through the eyes of Demon — he held onto the best parts of his mom. He loved being told that he was the best thing that ever happened to her.
  Demon was not only a likable child — but a forgiving character to boot (to a point)….
  But when his mother went and re-married a man named Stoner >>a beast of an abusive jerk, he only made Demon’s hard knock life worse.
  
  In one dialogue conversation— Demon was asked, “what he might like to do when he got older?” His replay…..was, “huh?, live”….
  To be a growing child with fear — to serious worry if whether or not you will survive to adulthood — let alone indulge a smudge of freedom— a taste of the American dream…is gut-wrenching.
  
  Love and hate are interwoven dangerously close together.
  We get clear visuals of the issues of our modern day American foster care system: homeless neglected children— victims of violence, abuse, and drug addictions are rampant.
  Children competing for food, hoarding food, and fighting for personal hygiene items is devastating. …..and is still a real issue.
  
  Demon was smart — he could read — draw - (superheroes of course) …and in some ways he was considered a ‘poverty- prodigy’ of sorts. But with so much abuse, addiction, poverty, betrayal all around him, without safety nets…. impoverished communities…it would take a miracle to come out on top.
  
  The ending is hopeful ……but before we get to the end —we journey through loss of innocence, alienation, isolation, cynicism, farm work, sarcasm, history, schools, shame, current events, social events, good versus evil, perseverance,— we meet other impactful characters influencing Demon’s life…(friends, Tommy, Emmy, Betsy, Dick,) Mrs. Peggot (a kind neighbor) — later in High School Coach Winfield and daughter Agnes….a football accident, a very powerful funeral that triggered memories of my own father’s funeral (he was 34- I was 4), —ongoing coming-of-age tales ��New Years, new jobs, summer vacations,
  a love interest, Dorie, the girl Demon falls in love with ( a complicated drug-related relationship)…..
  
  It’s too easy to get to a point in life …..”where you don’t give a damn if people are thinking that you are worthless”.
  
  Everything about this book is remarkable … The descriptions, the insights, the plot structure, the treacherous hardships, epic, epic epic..
  stunning—- beautiful and brilliantly written!
  
  Pulitzer Prize quality!
  
  As Demon himself might say…..”Shit, and Hallelujah”!
  He told a damn good story!
• 
  Kelly (and the Book Boar)

  Everyone and their dog has been falling all over the place expressing their love for Barbara Kingsolver’s latest release. And then there’s me . . . .
  
  
  
  
  I’m not here to yuck your yum so Imma keep it real short. In a nutshell, Kingsolver is an author who is consistently trying to write the “Great American Novel” and nothing demonstrates that more than her undertaking a modernization of David Copperfield. In short, I just don’t think she’s my jam. Nearly 25 years ago The Poisonwood Bible knocked my socks off, but it’s a book I could never re-read in fear that I wouldn’t have the same reaction a second time around.
  
  My main issue with this one is that I am so over clichéd, stereotypes of Appalachia. Boy oh boy did Demon Copperhead deliver them in spades. Our impoverished lead goes from bad to worse when it comes to an abusive household, to being orphaned, to one awful foster home situation to another (but don't worry - it ends at neglect - Kingsolver isn't ready to go to the darkest of locales when it comes to Demon's childhood). Eventually genetics get on young Demon’s side and he becomes a local high school football hero . . . until, you guessed it, his knee gets blown out and he becomes an addict. But don’t worry – he still gets a fairly happy ending and sees the ocean *eyeroll*
  
  In addition to the been there/done that feel of this entire story, you can’t re-write history in an attempt to prove how “woke” you are. A high school English teacher (and a black teacher in the middle of the Holler, at that) in the early to mid-1990s wouldn't have dared to explain the movement of literature changing the term “black” to “Black.” Not to mention how regular folks were not aware of the dangers of opioids or how Big Pharma was controlling the narrative when they first hit the market, but the nurse in here was 100% in the know of what's going down. You want to learn more about the modern-day drug crises and how it came to be? Read Dopesick.
• 
  Jen CAN

  Who is this Demon Copperhead?? Well, let me tell you: He’s a wild red headed melungeon, whipper snapper of a hillbilly. A young boy with a mind so expansive, how he describes life, is large.
  Orphaned at 11, Demon’s teenage years are fraught with sadness and hopelessness. Through foster homes, running away and at last finding his grandmother. A life headed to go off the rails, somehow maintained its balance, until it didn’t. As in life, there are tops and bottoms. In Demon’s, the bottom bottoms out with opiates- plundering his chances of making it out of poverty.
  
  Demon is a character you will grow attached to and cheer for in his early ages simply for his resilience. But life can be tough and heavy choices are made.
  
  Kingsolver, you haven’t lost your touch. This one is epic. This character; this story; the writing. But whoa. It does get dark and heavy for a long part of this journey and it makes one wonder of the helplessness and fear these addicts feel and face in reality.
  5⭐️
  
  Your 2nd story to grace my all time favourites standing next to
  The Poisonwood Bible
• 
  Meike

  Now Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 *yaaaaawn*
  A twist on
  David Copperfield, focusing on an Appalachian boy whose life is overshadowed by the opioid epidemic? That sounds like a fantastic idea. And Kingsolver does a great job crafting Demon Copperhead's voice, making the resourceful boy (and later young man) sound witty, empathetic, and engaging, infusing his whole vibe with some
  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and
  To Kill a Mockingbird. Of course we're also dealing with an important topic, and Kingsolver is here to give the overlooked and left-behind a voice - but this is where the problem starts.
  
  I am not at all saying that a successful, famous writer is generally unable to convey what it means to be a person like destitute Demon in the rural South, it just doesn't work very well in this particular text, and the reason can be found in the plot itself: While Kingsolver has a lot of empathy for her characters and is obviously very upset about the societal situation - this book is rooted in her impetus for change -, everything that happens to Demon is already present in the readers' preconceived notions of socially unstable, "backwards" Appalachia: Teenage single mom with substance abuse issues who dies? Check. Mean step-dad? Check. Abuse in the foster system? Check. Demon gets addicted to opioids? Check.
  
  Sure, the language is often evocative due to the strong narrator Demon, but at the end of the day, Kingsolver activates stereotypes that already exist in the readers' repertoire, and then adds some social commentary (capitalism is bad; rural communities deserve respect; the Sackler family is trash, etc.), so we all can feel like we are standing on the correct side, that we who are reading this are the good ones. This unchallenging outrage activism, no matter how well-intentioned, has a tendency to be patronizing and to serve as a narcissistic tool of moral self-assurance. It's, to put it bluntly, intellectually lazy, and it certainly does not help to show people from Appalachia in a new, more nuanced light - on the contrary: It only tells us what we already believe to be true.
  
  I, for once, want literature to challenge my beliefs, especially regarding communities I am not familiar with, so groups of people that only exist as reflections in my head to begin with (I am German, but I think Appalachia is a region that is unfamiliar to many Americans as well). When a novel relies so heavily on widespread notions and then adds clichéd narrative devices (of course Demon, in the most classic of all classic Bildungsroman motifs, is also an artist; and there is the tragic twist; and a football coach; and the good-hearted grandmother, ... *argh*), it becomes rather annoying, especially because this novel is way, way, way too long. Boy, it is long. It's insane. It just goes on. And on. And then it goes on. And finally, the ending is pure kitsch.
  
  So I guess this has solid chances to get Booker-nominated as the Oprah book club crowd-pleaser with the socially relevant message that outstays its welcome and is of dubious literary merit. If so, I'm glad that I can already cross it off my list. Demon as a character is great though.
• 
  Carolyn Walsh

  The excellent cover design first drew me to this book. I thought a modern adaptation of the classic David Copperfield would be a formidable task. When I saw it was written by Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote three of my favourite books, all wildly different in theme and location, The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacuna, and Flight Behaviour, I knew I wanted to purchase and read this. This is unlike her other books that enthralled me. It is an epic tale (over 600 pages) and a fabulous read. Its characters, the good, the wicked, the uncaring, and the disinterested, will stay in my memory for a long time.
  
  Demon (Damon) Copperhead was born to a teenage, addicted mother on the floor of her trailer. They faced extreme poverty in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia. The story follows Demon from his birth to young manhood. The writing is exquisite, although describing dark and disturbing circumstances. Demon narrates his life story, often with a sardonic sense of humour about deplorable situations. His father died before his birth, and Demon inherited his father's good looks and flaming red hair (Copperhead). His mother remarried a vile, abusive, violent man. Kindly neighbours, the Piggotts, were an early refuge for him, and the family also cared for other orphaned or forgotten children from dead or absent relatives.
  
  At age ten, Demon finds himself in the foster system when his mother dies. The system's workers were overburdened and usually uncaring, overlooking terrible situations where they placed their charges. He finds himself working on a farm with several orphaned boys, treated as slave labour, poisoned by the sap from tobacco plants, and nearly starved. Then he is moved to the McCobbs, sleeping in a dog's room, and expected to earn money by working outside the home to supplement the family's income. He rarely can attend school, and when he does, it reinforces his low self-esteem. Always hungry and poorly dressed, he is shunned by his classmates. He works in the trash after school and seldom is clean.
  
  Things start to look better when he moves into the home of a football coach who is determined to make a football player out of Demon for his winning team. He feels unworthy even in his short glory days as a football player. A painful injury on the sports field ends his brief football career and starts him on pain medication and the road to addiction. He becomes friends with Angus, the coach's teenager.
  
  Demon becomes reacquainted with an old friend from the miserable farm where they both laboured. This friend works for a local newspaper laying out ads and cartoon strips. Demon helps him by creating a superhero from the Appalachian region, as all the superheroes are drawn with their exploits in cities. The cartoon strip became very popular and is syndicated to other regional papers. One kindly art teacher recognizes Demon's talent for drawing cartoons and supports his efforts.
  
  However, things are going badly for Demon outside the newspaper office. He has married a girl he thinks is adorable. She is clingy and needy, will not cook or clean the house, and appliances have long stopped functioning. They live in filthy, nasty conditions, and she has fallen deep into drug addiction. She becomes distraught and angry if he leaves home to run errands or go to work. His memories of earlier injustices and poverty flood his mind and emotions with despair.
  
  His old friends are now part of the opioid and meth crisis, and Demon joins them. His best friend from the Piggott home is far into drugs and weird Gothic dress, and he and the once popular QB football hero are dealing. Former friends start dying from overdoses and reckless behaviour. Are there any supportive people who will save some of the addicted youth? Will Demon find a way out of his tragic past?
  
  We learn something about the region's history, the coal mining, those impoverished, marginalized people scorned by others and designated hillbillies and rednecks. ( a word with an interesting origin),
  and with social situations little improved since the time of Charles Dickens.
  Demon comments on David Copperfield, one of the few books he managed to read in school, " The Charles Dickens one seriously old guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over, and nobody gives a rat's ass. You'd think he was from around here."
  
  Highly recommended!
• 
  Diana

  I know some readers want a novel to be concise, revised down to your basic 300-ish pages, but what a luxurious feeling it is when you find yourself more than 300 pages into a book that is really engaging, with characters you truly care about, and realize there are more than 500 pages left to go. You get to know the people in these books better, maybe see them grow over a longer period of time. You get to know the whole world of the book better. But that makes it even sadder when you finish it.
  
  I loved this book, a modern Appalachian retelling of David Copperfield, another very long book that I really liked. Kingsolver is good at both seriousness and playfulness, as Dickens was, and she cares deeply about backwoods, rocky Virginia. This works for me, too- I never lived in Appalachia, but I have deep family roots in West Virginia, and I care about that part of the world. I got invested in young Demon (a nickname for Damon) quickly and cared about him all the way through. Even when he makes awful mistakes in this book, he’s a loving person, and I think his worst mistakes are made out of love. He’s good at making connections with people who might save him, too, and he’s generous with the people in his life even when things are unbelievably hard. I like how Demon, even when he’s going through something terrible, notices and is buoyed by the beauty of the natural world. The sense of place is strong in this book. The characters are even stronger, and you care about them deeply as they suffer in the eye of the opioid storm that still wracks our country. I’ve read almost all of Kingsolver’s books, and I think this has replaced The Poisonwood Bible as my favorite. As always when I’m truly loving a book, I worried about the ending. Would the author stick the landing? I am haunted by the ghosts of a few books that just lost it at the end. But she stuck the landing! I love where the book ends.
  
  Now I kind of feel like going back and rereading David Copperfield? It’s been a while. Thanks to NetGalley for giving me early access to my favorite book of the year.
• 
  Sara

  I waited a long time to get my turn for this book from the library. I was anticipating it with relish, because several of my trusted friends had loved it and said they, like me, had not enjoyed Kingsolver’s last few books. I was all prepared to be swept away, and I was in the beginning, but Demon has a voice that captivates you and then wears on you and then wears you out.
  
  At least Kingsolver wasn’t preaching to me in this book, but she did seem to be in love with the sound of her own voice, because she wrote pages and pages on subjects that could have sufficed with much less, and she repeated herself endlessly regarding both the lousy DSS system, the details of drug addiction, and the hopelessness of anyone who is born in the hills of Appalachia. At some point, for me, that hopelessness became a bit like the prejudice she seemed to be railing against.
  
  The first 200 pages of this book were somewhat enchanting, the middle was a slog, and the ending was not enough to make up for that. It was not a bad read, but not the 5-star read I had hoped for. Perhaps in the end, you cannot tell someone else’s story as well as they do. David Copperfield is 10-star material, Kingsolver transformed it into something just a tad over okay.
  
  I had said to myself once before that Kingsolver and I were done with one another, but this book tempted me back for another try. This time, I think, the breakup is permanent. So many other authors I want to give a fair chance.
  
  If you have the stomach for the endless beating of the opioid drum, this book will be for you. There are meant to be redeeming moments at the end, promises of better lives for a few, but those seem more like dreams, while the sinking and despair that consumed ninety percent of this book seemed all too real.
• 
  Karen

  Very powerful coming of age story of a boy who the odds were set against from the start.
  Demon was born to a drug abusive, single teenaged mother.. in the single wide trailer they lived in, in the mountains of southern Appalachia.
  The trailer was owned by the Peggot’s a large family who lived next door and played a big part in his survival most times.
  A story of how the opioid drugs moved into this region and destroyed the lives of family members and friends, actually the whole community ..
  Demon’s journey through foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success and then addiction following an injury… just crushing losses.
  This story is about serious issues but was laced with many really funny moments, which I really enjoyed.
  I just loved Demon’s character! This is a long book.. but I could have just kept reading about Demon and his life.
  I listed to about half of this book on audio and the narrator was fantastic!
  
  My first Kingsolver.. I’ll be checking out her other books!
• 
  Tammy

  While this is a re-telling of David Copperfield you certainly don’t have to be familiar with Dickens’ novel to be moved by Kingsolver’s version. Taking place in Southern Appalachia rather than Victorian England the same set of horrifying tragedies still exist with the addition of the opioid crisis that particularly plagues the south. As you might imagine this is not a cheerful read but it provides a scathing look at a forgotten population told by a perceptive and canny red-haired kid who has had more than his share of poverty, starvation, crummy foster homes and losses. He is a hero worth rooting for. A must read.
• 
  Diane Barnes

  "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."
  
  I knew from that first sentence I would love this book. I knew by page 50 that it would be five stars, by page 75 my favorite book of the year. Having finished, I'm moving it up to one of my lifetime favorite books. It really is that good, that moving, that perfect. That's a lot from an author that had disappointed me with her last few books. Kingsolver never got past her wonderful Poisonwood Bible success with me, and after a couple of later books, I just gave up on her. I wanted to try this because of the David Copperfield connection. I last read that in high school,many long years ago, but give Dickens credit, I still remembered the plot and the characters, and of course, their names. Kingsolver takes David/Demon and plops him down in present day Appalachia, and never misses a beat. Having said that, even if you never even heard of David Copperfield, this is a great novel on its own.
  
  I'll let the GR blurb give you the basics. Just get this book in your hands and read it. I will even go so far as to say it will probably win everything, certainly the National Book Award, most likely the Pulitzer. It will certainly win your heart. I got mine from the library, but will buy a copy when it comes out in paperback. Don't let the fact that it's 540+ pages deter you, it needs every word to get this story told.
  
  Now I need to reread David Copperfield, just for the icing on the cake.
• 
  Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤

  Demon Copperhead deserves every fiction prize there is. Every single one of them. Even the ones that don't exist.
  
  Many years ago, shortly after I started working at my library, I mentioned to a colleague I had a headache.
  
  "Mabel", sweet and helpful as ever, said to come back to her desk and she'd give me something for it. She pulled out a gallon-size Ziploc bag (that's almost 4 liters, for all the non-United Statians reading this).
  
  Mabel asked me what kind did I want. 'Um, ibuprofen?' I queried, not seeing anything but orange prescription bottles in that see-through plastic bag.
  
  She looked at me and said she didn't have it but any of these pills would help a lot more than ibuprofen would. 
  
  I declined, worried to take prescription painkillers. I worried for her, seeing that big ol' bag.
  
  "You don't take all of these, do you, Mabel?", I asked. 
  
  She said well of course she did, "Jenna, when you get old, you get a lot of different pains and each of these are for a different one". 
  
  With that, Mabel began pulling out bottles, reading the labels as she did. "This here's for my neck. This for my back. Oh, this is the best, it helps my arthritis," she said, shaking a bottle of Oxys. 
  
  She continued pulling out bottles, lining them up on the edge of her desk. I think just about every part of her body hurt and every part of her body had its own pill.
  
  A white-haired, intelligent, professionally employed woman, Mabel wasn't your stereotypical addict. She had been a librarian for decades, the favorite of most of our patrons. But, like every other pain pill addict I knew, Mabel's addiction began in the doctor's office. She wasn't some lowlife just looking to get high. She trusted her doctors and believed them that you couldn't get addicted if you really had pain.
  
  There are so many stories about addiction, some true, some based on the truth. Mabel, while not her real name, was a real person with a real addiction that probably killer her (she had a brain aneurysm which are often brought on by opioids). Not all stories have happy endings.
  
  As for this book and this story, I loved it. Loved it in so many ways and for so many reasons. Barbara Kingsolver, being Appalachian, "gets" Appalachians, us hillbillies. She writes with so much authenticity.
  
  These characters? I know them. They live down the street, they come in the library, they shop at Walmart, pushing their "buggies" full of sugar drinks and sugar cereals, trying to get the most amount of calories for their kids for the least amount of dollars.
  
  Ms. Kingsolver also "gets" the pain pill/heroin epidemic, how and why it started, and how greedy pharmaceutical CEOs and everyone under them, down to both the equally greedy doctors and the well-meaning but witless ones, destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives.
  
  There is a lot about addiction in these pages, but there's so much more than that. It is real and deep and emotional and rip-your-heart-out stuff. It is what Hillbilly Elegy could have been if JD Vance wasn't such a stuck on himself braggart asshole. 
  
  Young Demon Copperhead had me from the very first page. I knew this kid, I'd seen him grow up, and watched him grow up all over again through the pages of this book. I cannot praise it highly enough, trite as those words are. It's difficult to find words to describe it - again trite, but the truth. 
  
  If you want a book that is going to suck you in and hold you rapt and take you on a roller coaster of emotions, Demon Copperhead is the book for you. Don't be intimidated by the length. As another friend wrote in her review (hey, Diane 👋🏼), "it needs every word to get this story told."
• 
  Carolyn

  Barbara Kingsolver’s reworking of David Copperfield as a tale for our times is a masterful portrayal of what it can be like for a child to be born and grow up amongst the poorest and most marginalised in America today. Children who are labelled as society’s dregs and treated as if they are in some way lesser beings because their clothes are ragged and they are always hungry.
  
  Damon Fields, nicknamed Demon Copperhead (for his red hair), is a child born to a single teenage mother living in a trailer, his father dead before his birth, in Lee County in the Virginian Appalachians. While his mother struggles with drug addiction and is in and out of rehab, Demon is also cared for by the kindly Peggot family next door, grandparents bringing up their own grandson whose mother is in prison. He learns to love the wild forests, to hunt and fish and what it’s feels like to be part of a large family. However, when he is ten, Demon’s world really falls apart when his mother marries an abusive man with no interest in raising a child. This is the start of a downhill spiral for Demon that leads to the nightmare of foster care, where he is expected to work to earn his keep, never given enough to eat or provided with bigger clothing as he grows. After he hits his lowest point, a change in fortune will find him in a better place but, with a baggage of neglect, abuse and poverty, he’s not equipped to weather the storms still to come and is in danger of repeating the cycle of addiction and poverty.
  
  However, even at his lowest point Demon never loses his will to survive or to see the best in people. His ability to draw and conjure up superheros with the power to save the weak and downtrodden is his richest possession and along with his sense of humour and intelligence keeps him going in the toughest of times. This is a long book and I did find it slow down in the latter half when Kingsolver is fully laying out the causes and effects of the opiod crisis in America, particularly in marginalised populations, such as in poor rural areas where there is high unemployment and people are told they are worthless. However, sad and depressing Demon’s story is, it felt very real and hopefully will lead to better understanding of what it is to be caught up in poverty through no fault of your own, poorly educated and without hope and told you are worthless, with the lure of drugs one way to make it all go away for a while. Demon is a character I will not easily forget in this insightful and provocative novel. 4.5★
  
  With thanks to Faber & Faber via Netgalley for a copy to read
• 
  NZLisaM

  3.5 rounded up to 4.
  
  In Lee County, Virginia in the late 1980’s, a baby named Damon Fields is born in a trailer (his birth somewhat dramatic and unusual), to a single teenage alcoholic mother. Damon quickly morphs into Demon, and the name assigned to him, Copperhead, he chooses to continue to use as a tribute to his father, who died before he was born.
  
  For the first ten years of his life, Demon Copperhead lives a poverty-stricken, unorthodox childhood, albeit a happy, safe and fairly stable one. Until tragedy sees him being sent to a series of foster homes.
  
  Narrated entirely by Demon – his strength of character, enduring, resilience spirit, and ability to find humour in any situation that was thrown at him, made this an unforgettable read. The material was bleak, graphic, hard-hitting and honest, but comic relief injected into the writing prevented things from ever becoming too depressing to handle. Demon’s coming-of-age epic journey into adulthood saw me feeling every emotion under the sun. Modernised and loosely based on Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, which I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t yet gotten around to, therefore am unable to compare the two. To me, Demon Copperhead gave me This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, and Lemony Snickel’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (sans magical fantasy) vibes. In fact, the writing itself was similar to William Kent Krueger (an author I love) although the tone was darker. Also, unlike Krueger’s work, there was profanity and salty language, which I can take-it-or-leave-it, but I know some don’t care for it, so thought I’d better mention it.
  
  I listened to the entire 633 pages via audio borrowed from Libby Overdrive, and the narrator, Charlie Thurston was the perfect choice to voice Demon Copperhead. His tone, emotion, and character accents really brought the written material to life, as well as heightened my amusement ever further than what reading it myself would have.
  
  The first 40% was exciting, addictive, and unforgettable. But, after that Demon’s character arc went in a direction that to me slowed the overall pace, and caused the book to drag. I really think that section could’ve been condensed down. At about 60% things did pick up again, but didn’t reach the impacting heights of first 300 pages.
  
  Mary Beth and I buddy read Demon Copperhead, and like many other reviewers she deemed it worthy of all the stars. Initially I felt the same, but the wheels slowly fell off for me as the book progressed. The subject matter was powerful and important, but if I’m honest, It all got a bit tired. I actually feel a bit guilty that I didn’t find the themes in the last half as impactful as I probably should have. I’d definitely recommend giving it a read though, especially given how strong the first 40% was, and because most who have read it have raved over it in its entirety.
• 
  Lindsay - Traveling Sisters Book Reviews

  5+ stars!
  
  2023 Favourites List!
  
  Demon Copperhead is a ten-year-old boy living in a single wide trailer with his young mother in the back Holler of the Appalachian mountains in Virginia. This is Demon’s story. He tells his story starting from the day he was born to a teenage mother too young to know anything about parenting and too focused on getting her next fix of alcohol, drugs and bad men. Demon chronicles his life of poverty, foster care, crime, filth, abuse and loneliness. There are bright spots throughout the way, but nothing that could shine clear through the constant neglect and heartbreak this young boy faces.
  
  As dark and disturbing as this story is, it was a phenomenal reading experience for me. Truly - it was an exceptional and outstanding novel that surpassed any expectation I had. For me, the most stand out aspect was the narrative. Demon’s voice is one I’ll never forget. The author created a fascinating, impactful, endearing and heartbreaking character in Demon, giving him a voice that sent his story right to my heart. Demon’s narrative is raw and gritty. It’s filled with slang and backwoods grammar. It’s authentic and real and had me enraptured. There were many sentences of tender raw honesty from Demon that went straight to my heart.
  
  You’ll be able to quickly decide if this book is for you based on how you feel about Demon’s narrative. If you don’t connect with his voice and backwoods drawl within the first few pages, this won’t be for you.
  
  There is so much that happens within these pages. It is a dark, gritty, heartbreaking read. The endless cycle of poverty and abuse is depressing but a reality many children face. I appreciate getting this harrowing glance into this life as it makes me even more thankful for what I have and encourages me to help others as much as possible.
  
  Overall, this was a remarkable book that I highly recommend! I hope you connect with Demon’s story as much as I did.
• 
  Taury

  This book is full of potential triggers especially for those in recovery.
  
  There are very few books I will say deserve more than
  5🌟 but Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is one of them. Another, I seldom re-read books. I am ready to start again. Lastly, 21 hour book should have taken me 4-5 days to complete by audio. Not only did I complete in 3, but i was never waiting for it to end
  
  Now on to the book. It was fantastic. I had no idea what it was about. Lots of mixed reviews. It begins in first person with little dialog. Huge turn-off for me. I feel like I am being read to. But no. It fit it was perfect. This author did an amazing job making everything I don’t like just work! WoW!
  
  Damon is a 10-11 year old boy who is raised in a home by a mother who is an addict. She has an abusive boyfriend. She dies. At the age of 11 Damon is introduced to the foster care system. The book follows Damon through his life. Lots of death, suicide, alcohol, drugs. Heroin.
  Being an addiction counselor, I was fascinated with his sheer will to survive. Working in a Methadone clinic I was interested in his inner thoughts and feelings as Heroin and Oxy played in his life. From Rags to Living. Demon Copperhead was a book that taught me and fascinated me alike.
  
  Book is dedicated:To the survivors. So to the survivors of the hell we walk through in life.
  I am proud to be a survivor. I am proud to help others survive!
  
  It is vein to recall the past unless it works some influence upon the present ~Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
• 
  Leo

  I've seen almost only raving reviews on this one but unfortunately I just not one of those who loved the book. It's good writing and all that but just did nothing ro draw me in and evoke strong emotions. At the same time I can see why so many others likes it
• 
  Candi

  Demon Copperhead is said to be inspired by David Copperfield, a masterpiece I read a couple of years ago. I most definitely can see that inspiration in Kingsolver’s novel. I would be hesitant, however, to make any further comparisons because for me that puts a contemporary novel on shaky ground when setting it next to a classic, beloved book. I can somehow forgive Charles Dickens for his verbosity. After all, that was the vogue back in his day. David Copperfield was a series of installments, stretched out over a period of time. He didn’t get paid by the word but by installment; still, he had a lot of mouths to feed. Barbara Kingsolver, on the other hand, could have done with a lot less, and I would have been a much happier reader for it. That’s not to say that her points are less important than Dickens’ themes. She absolutely had good reason to share what she did here.
  
  “That November it was still a shiny new thing. OxyContin, God’s gift for the laid-off deep-hole man with his back and neck bones grinding like bags of gravel. For the bent-over lady pulling double shifts at Dollar General with her shot knees and ADHD grandkids to raise by herself. For every football player with some of this or that torn up, and the whole world riding on his getting back in the game. This was our deliverance. The tree was shaken and yes, we did eat of the apple.”
  
  But this isn’t only about drugs and pharmaceutical companies and shady doctors taking advantage of a whole group of people. It’s also about the foster care system and how it fails those most in need of protection. It’s about the long reach of the coal mine owners and how their power reverberated across the years, affecting everything in these individual’s lives from wages to education to property and more. Someone should be held accountable, and that’s where I find Kingsolver’s work to be admirable, without a doubt. However, I still couldn’t get the author out of my head while reading this story - despite the fact it was supposedly told through a young boy-turned-young adult’s point of view. I’ve read and loved some of Kingsolver’s earlier work but have had difficulty with more of her “recent” work for the same reason. If I sense the writer sitting next to me on the couch while I read, I get a little cranky. I would much rather feel like his or her characters are having a nice heart to heart with me instead. And that brings me to another niggle - Demon’s “voice” throughout the book. I just couldn’t jibe with it. It got on my nerves A LOT!
  
  “If a mother is lying in her own piss and pill bottles while they’re slapping the kid she’s shunted out, telling him to look alive: likely the bastard is doomed. Kid born to the junkie is a junkie. He’ll grow up to be everything you don’t want to know, the rotten teeth and dead-zone eyes, the nuisance of locking up your tools in the garage so they don’t walk off, the rent-by-the-week motel squatting well back from the scenic highway.”
  
  I don’t mind gritty but what I couldn’t quite wrap my head around was who on earth is speaking these words? Supposedly, this is Demon as a young boy at the start of the story (the above passage occurs on page 2). Is this a super savvy kid speaking? Or is it Demon as an old man looking back and narrating? Or is it Kingsolver trying really hard to create a voice she feels is authentic? I don’t know, honestly. But it happened over and over again to me throughout the 500+ pages. It's like nails on a chalkboard!
  
  Okay, I’ll lay off the complaining now. This is, after all, a 3-star book in my mind so there has to be another good thing or two, right?! What I loved most were the strong women in Demon’s life. Without them, I’m afraid to imagine Demon’s fate. In these Appalachia stories, I’ve often found that the women are the ones holding down the fort. It’s their strength and perseverance in the face of adversity that forms a safety net for those they care for most. And I can see where these women equate to those in Dickens’ story as well. This makes for a bit of fun, but you surely don’t need to read his book to understand this one. It just adds another level perhaps. There’s even a passage in here where Demon nods to that famous work.
  
  “I had to do the harder English, which was a time suck, reading books. Some of them though, I finished without meaning to… Likewise the Charles Dickens one, seriously older guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over and nobody giving a rat’s ass. You’d think he was from around here.”
  
  I’ll say that this is an important topic to explore. Personally, it would work better if it had been edited more thoroughly. Yes, a shorter story can still make a huge impact. I also think a non-fiction piece on the opioid crisis would be a lot more effective for me. I know they are out there, and I will explore that option more thoroughly. Now, would I have loved this more if Richard Armitage had been reading it to me as he did David Copperfield? Damn straight I would have!! He could have read another 500 pages of this one to me and I’d have been content.
  
  “It hit me pretty hard, how there’s no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning.”
  
• 
  Kerrin

  Phew, that was long... but worth it. I listened to the audio and highly recommend it.
  
  True confession: I have never read
  David Copperfield, so I cannot compare this re-telling to the inspiration. That certainly did not take away from my enjoyment of the story.
  
  Demon Copperhead is the nickname given to the red-headed Damon Fields. Demon beautifully narrates the story of his life beginning with his birth to an 18-year-old drug-addicted mother, through his childhood followed by the trauma of the foster care system, to his own addiction, and ending with his recovery.
  
  4.5-stars, rounded up.
• 
  PattyMacDotComma

  3★
  “Mom said he could grow hair if he wanted to, but liked shaving his head. To her mind, a ripped, bald guy in a denim vest and no shirt was the be-all end-all of manhood. If you’re surprised a mom would discuss boyfriend hotness with a kid still learning not to pick his nose, you’ve not seen the far end of lonely. Mom would light me a cigarette and we’d have our chats, menthols of course, this being in her mind the child-friendly option. I thought smoking with Mom and discussing various men’s stud factors was a sign of deep respect.”
  
  He's not even a teen, he’s only ten, but his mother was so young and alone when she had him, that she treats him like a companion, cigarettes and all. He’s not a bad kid. He’s a normal kid born into dreadful circumstances. His father died in an accident, and both sets of grandparents had disowned them, so his parents were left to their own devices. Mom is a recovering alcoholic, at least sometimes.
  
  This takes place in the western-most corner of Virginia, USA, in the coal country on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. This is the middle of Appalachia, a long region that runs down from New York to the deep south, inland from the east coast. It is referred to disparagingly as hillbilly country.
  
  Damon is not happy about his name, a “boy band” name as he says, because it’s so easy to turn into Demon at school. He used his mother’s last name, Fields, but because of his red hair, he got Copperhead instead.
  
  Is there a name that it isn’t possible to twisted or bastardise in the name of so-called fun? I doubt it. Demon it is. His best friend is Maggot (Matthew), and surely that’s worse.
  
  It’s a very long, very drawn-out story of his bouncing painfully between foster homes that are really available to him only because they want his government welfare check and the free labour that a good-sized ten-year-old can provide.
  
  School? If it’s convenient, but if it’s tobacco harvesttime, forget it. Department inspections? Minimal if anything. The assigned officers mean well but are overwhelmed with cases, and a boy like Demon is hard to place.
  
  I’m afraid I am too familiar with the flaws and dangers in the child welfare system and with the deprivation and inequality of societies around the world. I don’t think Virginia and Appalachia is better or worse, but it’s awful, and Kingsolver includes everything she can think of to spread the message.
  
  I nearly gave up on this many times, but I decided to stick it out to see how she wound it up. I know there are readers who have loved this story. I’m not one of them.
  
  Something I did really enjoy was the author’s essay at the end, where she wrote about her inspiration while she and her husband were visiting England. She had booked a place in an inn.
  
  “Because this was Bleak House. Not in my mind, but in actual fact. This guest house had once been the seaside residence of Charles Dickens. I’d run across it online and booked us in on impulse, thinking it might be inspiring.
  . . .
  If I wished to spend my holiday weekend sitting at the desk where Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield, I should feel free.
  . . .
  Once we’d settled in for the night, I took the blank notebook I’d carried for a month and excused myself to the little room down the hall that Dickens used to call his ‘airy nest’. I closed the door, rolled up my sleeves and rested my forearms, then my forehead, on the wooden desk. Trying to ignore the question I couldn’t stop hearing: ‘what next?’
  . . .
  I live in the southern Appalachian Mountains, a beautiful, rural place where we’re now watching a generation of kids grow up damaged or orphaned by prescription drug abuse. The story is much bigger than a bottle of pills: it’s about generational anguish, limited choices and suffocated hopes, poverty built into a region by historical design. That place is my home, I know its beauties and tragedies by heart, but this project daunted me.”
  
  She saw all the David Copperfield memorabilia on the walls, realising the David was actually Charles, who grew up in the poorhouse as a child labourer, a miserable childhood. She says it’s the artists job to make people hear things they don’t want to. She swears she heard Dickens speak to her.
  
  “‘Look to the child,’ he said. What I am telling you, believe it or don’t, is that I heard these words, spoken. Possibly in exasperation for my failure to grasp the basics: nobody doubts or blames the child. It’s the straightest shot to the heart.”
  
  She is exactly right. If this book speaks to you, it will go straight to your heart. I hope the essay is included in the published version. I’m quoting from a preview copy, because I think it’s important to stress that I believe Kingsolver’s motives are genuine and the story is real. She isn’t one of those writers jumping on a popular bandwagon to sell a book.
  
  I wish I’d had more of a connection with the characters and wanted to know what happened to them. I didn’t feel at all compelled to find out, I’m afraid. I suspect that’s my problem, not the author’s. Thanks to NetGalley and Faber and Faber for the copy for review.
  
• 
  Em Lost In Books

  "The wonder is that you could start with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between."
  
  And Demon Copperhead led one hell of a life in between.
• 
  Lori Keeton

  A small-town Applachian kid born to a junkie, Demon Copperhead has all the signs of going nowhere fast. Life starts cruel and doesn’t get much better as he grows up in poverty, with a single mom who marries a real doozy of a guy who gets his kicks by abusing and terrorizing his new family. Demon is a likable youngster who has a love of drawing superheroes and when he becomes orphaned, he gets caught up in the broken foster care system bouncing around from place to place and home to home living with people who don’t want him. Can you even imagine? Going through life having so little faith in the people, adults, who should be there for him, life as a constant let down. His love for and belief in superheroes just goes to show that he is crying out for someone to help him, believe in him, love him. But when life takes a turn for the positive for Demon and then is swiftly taken away, Demon’s life is seemingly changed forever.
  
  Me, though. I was a born sucker for the superhero rescue. Did that line of work even exist, in our trailer-home universe? Had they all quit Smallville and gone looking for bigger action? Save or be saved, these are questions. You want to think it’s not over till the last page.
  
  Barbara Kingsolver set out to write a story for the survivors to demonstrate their resiliency to overcome a lot of life’s garbage. Her story is one that reflects the social injustices that plague her native Appalachia and pokes a finger at those institutions that have disappointed and let down the people living in these communities. She takes aim at these institutions as well as shedding a very harsh light on the opioid epidemic that has plagued and continues to plague these rural areas of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. She embraces how the people here are so often misrepresented and misunderstood, gives the people a voice and shines a light on heartbreaking circumstances.
  
  But Kingsolver also determined to retell one of the most iconic and well-known of Charles Dicken’s novels, David Copperfield. I believe that she has done it well with her own style and with her characters that represent Appalachia. Dickens was a huge proponent of championing the social issues of his day especially when it came to poverty and orphans. Readers familiar with Dickens and David’s story will recognize characters and storylines.
  
  This is NOT an easy novel to read. It wrenches at your gut and stomps on your soul. It is bleak and difficult to get through. The language is raw and rough. But Kingsolver’s prose is pointed and piercing and gets to the heart of her mission. I highly recommend reading this book even if you have absolutely no connection to Appalachia. You won’t be surprised to find themes prevalent all over the United States.
• 
  Bianca

  Demon Copperhead was my first Kingsolver novel.
  
  I'm in awe, this was one hell of a novel.
  
  Demon Copperhead is the narrator of this novel. He didn't win the birth lottery, he was born to a teenage single mother, who was addicted to alcohol and drugs. They lived in a small community in the Southern Appalachians. She does the best she can, but she's not terribly capable. And then, Demon becomes an orphan. Here come disappointments, including terrible foster homes. Some good things happen to Demon as well. His life is a rollercoaster, with many nauseating highs and lows. Speaking of highs and lows, he gets the physical kind as well when he joins the plethora of painkiller addicts.
  
  While I had seen the news reports and read articles about the opioid crisis that destroyed so many people and communities, reading about it in this novel was more potent as it was portrayed through characters that I came to care about.
  
  I read other novels about dispossessed communities, more often than not, they come very close to joining a category of novels which I call misery/trauma porn. This incredible novel never even comes close to going into that (made-up) category, quite the feat as far as I'm concerned.
  
  The voicing was outstanding, it felt so realistic, even more, impressive was the fact that Kingsolver chose to write this through the voice of a male character.
  
  Another thing that I noticed and was impressed by was the lack of preaching, even though the novel had plenty to convey.
  
  So don't let this novel's size put you off, it's an easy read/listen, it's got a fast pace, and there's no sagging, lagging or padding - it's remarkable.
  
  A special mention goes to Charlie Thurston, who was terrific, he should get an award for his splendid reading.
• 
  Theresa Alan

  Damon is born in a double-wide trailer to a too-young mom who battles substance abuse. The father died before he was born. Demon is the nickname he takes on along with the last name Copperhead—snakes that allegedly roamed around the area in the southern mountains of Appalachia where they live. When his mother dies, he survives a string a foster care places where he’s literally treated like a dog. He’s always hungry, in part because he’s a growing boy but also the foster families put him to work difficult and sometimes dangerous jobs as a way to earn his keep, while they pocket the money the state gives them on anything other than giving him an adequate diet. There are long scenes that just simply heartbreaking, because if you’ve ever read anything about foster care and the way the Sackler family through the pharmaceutical firm Purdue destroyed the lives not just of people who got addicted but their families as well, you’ll be furious. This might technically be fiction, but it’s also an insight into the troubling way doctors sold their souls for trips to Hawaii even after the addiction aspects of the drugs became clear.
  
  Damon finally finds the mother of his dead father. Through her, she sets him up in a house of a coach who, during the season his whole life is football, and out of season, he quiets his mind by consuming excessive amounts of alcohol. Because Damon is tall for his age, Coach Winfield fast tracks him on to the team. Now, Damon is treated like something of a star instead of the slurs he’s faced his whole life. Until he gets an injury and is prescribed Oxy. Now beer and weed won’t cut it, and he spends a great deal of time procuring drugs and prescriptions and selling drugs to be able to afford drugs and also groceries. The woman he loves really goes off the deep end drug-wise after her father dies. Now she has no purpose. Damon’s purpose is to keep her alive, which is getting harder to do.
  
  The characters in this are complex. They have magnetic appeal but treat people terribly. You hope the kids that finally get some help can stay healthy.
  
  There is political commentary about how city people treat people who live not just off jobs at Walmart but through hunting, fishing, sewing their own clothes, and raising crops. One of the few bright spots in Damon’s brief high school years is that he’s a gifted artist who meets an art teacher who can help him bring his art to a higher level. This is a largely depressing book because even though it’s fiction, it does cover real-life lives destroyed by drugs that are prescribed by doctors but are so addictive, anything else in life but getting blotto pales in comparison.
• 
  Jill

  “A good story doesn’t just copy life, it pushes back on it.”
  
  This line appears relatively late in this masterpiece by Barbara Kingsolver, but it summarizes what this gifted author achieves throughout this novel – pushing back on a life where 10-year-old orphaned boys are lost in the revolting morass of foster care where nobody gives a damn and where they have lost life’s lottery from the moment they are born.
  
  Add in no decent schooling, no chance to get good at anything, no caring or responsible adults to oversee what will happen to them, and an out-of-control oxytocin crisis that enfolds the few who can fight back, and it’s a powerful indictment about where our country is falling down. The novel would be heartbreaking if it were not for the resiliency of Demon Copperfield, who emerges with a heart that overflows with goodness and a powerful survivor’s instinct.
  
  Barbara Kingsolver states that she was inspired by Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield and his impassioned critique of institutional poverty. Indeed, English literature majors like me will see the parallels between Dickens’ work and this one – the young boy whose father died before he was born, the violent stepfather, the helpful Peggots (in Dickens, the nurse was named Peggotty), the idolization of a boy who doesn’t deserve it, and of course Agnes (renamed Angus).
  
  But here, the setting is not urban London but the misunderstood and often caricaturized Appalachia. If any children need a superhero to recover their dignity and self-respect, it is those children, who are spurned by foster care and child protective services and victimized by oxytocin and meth addiction and actively supplied with the tools to cook out their brains. Indeed, this is a Victorian saga transposed to our modern-day times, and the sad thing is, too much of the way we discard and dismiss children hasn’t changed. For shame.
  
  Like David Copperfield, Demon must wrestle with his own invisibility in a rural backcountry where superheroes do not exist unless you strive to become one yourself. The novel asks: can we change our trajectory in life with the odds so much against us? Can we – to paraphrase T.S. Eliot – go back to the place it all began and know the place for the first time? What gives our lives hope and meaning? This book is just phenomenal, and I can’t thank HarperCollins enough for granting my request to be an early reader in exchange for an honest review. Six stars!
  
  
  
• 
  Anne

  Demon on his birth and his mother's addiction:
  
  “..Mom..lived in fear of losing custody, and gave her all in rehab. I came out, Mom went in, and gave it a hundred percent. Gave and gave again over the years, getting to be an expert at rehab, like they say. Having done it so many times.”.
  
  Barbara Kingsolver set out to write a book which would showcase both her love and her sadness for her beloved Appalachia. She did this brilliantly with the creation of the fabulous and memorable protagonist Demon Copperhead. I love first person narrators and Demon is one of the very best. His voice makes this novel. With his sardonic wit Demon narrates the story of his life from birth to adulthood. Along the way I fell in love with him, his language and his humor which helps him survive the hardest of times. His Appalachian wit sparkles on every page. It made me smile and sometimes laugh my way through this book despite the poverty, addiction, etc..
  
  Perhaps Barbara Kingsolver's best book to date.
  
  The audio narration by Charlie Thurston is exceptional.
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  Bam cooks the books ;-)

  'Charles Dickens, seriously old guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans being screwed over and nobody giving a rat's ass. You'd think he was from around here,' says Demon Copperhead, hero of his own story. Demon was born to an 18-year-old junkie mother on the floor of a trailer home in rural Virginia. Things do not get much better for the boy from there on as he suffers through child abuse, the vagaries of foster care and child protective services and eventually fails victim to the opiod epidemic.
  
  Barbara Kingsolver has written a compelling adaptation of Dickens' beloved classic novel David Copperfield, setting it in her own time and place, the hills and hollers of Appalachia, and examining many of the same social ills that still plague our times. The characters she has created are so fully-developed and amazingly real, people this reader came to love, hate or maybe a touch of both. I tried to pick a favorite character, besides Demon himself of course, but soon realized there were just too many to choose from: Aunt June; Tommy; Mr Dick; Angus; Mr Armstrong; Ms Annie; Hammer Kelly. There are a few who try to be helpful but simply fall short, like Mrs Peggot; Miss Barks; Ms Betsey; Coach. Other kids who fall through the cracks of life like Dori; Emmy; Maggot. Plenty to hate too--like Stoner; Fast Forward; Creaky; the McCobbs; the hooker at the truck stop; U-Haul Pyles (think Uriah Heep); Dr Watts; Rose. At any rate, I will not soon forget these characters in the days to come. Every person has a story, don't they? Reading is one way to learn what it's like to be in someone else's shoes.
  
  I shouldn't fail to mention the interesting Appalachian history and beauty of the landscape that is woven into the story. Kingsolver looks at the differences between rural and city living and reminds us that derogatory words like 'hillbilly' are just as bad as other slurs--anything like that is used to belittle others. She explains the origin of 'rednecks' which began during a coal miners strike and the neckerchiefs they wore.
  
  I highly recommend this novel: it's a bit long but the story truly draws you in. I'm thinking it will make a great gift this holiday season for the book lovers on my list. It is definitely my favorite for the year 2022.
  
  I received an arc from the author and publisher via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.