Book Review: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
The Details
Media Type: Audiobook
Title: Demon Copperhead
Author(s): Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages/Length: 21 hours and 3 minutes
Release Date: October 18, 2022
Source: Library Borrow
Add it on: Goodreads | Amazon | Bookshop
“Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose.”
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is 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.
The Review
Oof, this book. As you can tell from my 5-star rating up there this is a good oof, not a bad one. What I mean is that this book is heavy. I picked this up on a whim from the library, because the app had it featured, and I didn’t even read the synopsis. So, due to the way my brain works, I thought I was headed straight into a Fantasy novel. This, is not that. Demon Copperhead is a story about poverty. It’s a story about growing up in a system that sets you up to feel almost immediately upon being born. Still, it’s also a story about hope, and about fighting for your dreams despite everything the spiteful world throws at you. This wasn’t the Fantasy novel I was expecting, but damn if it wasn’t absolutely enthralling.
The story opens on a young Demon (Damon) Copperhead, leading us into his story. On the cusp of becoming a teenager, Demon is still young enough to feel a bit of magic when looking at the world around him. Where other people see southern Appalachia, and specifically his hometown, as a place to be avoided, he sees it as a lucky place to grow up. Sure, his mother is an addict. She’s doing better though. Sure, he doesn’t have a lot of money. He eats okay though. With an entire forest at his front and back door, his best friend next door, and the freedom to do whatever he wants, what more can a young boy ask for? I wish I could have sat with this Demon forever.
Still, we all know that life deals a tough hand sometimes. Soon events unfold that force Demon into a new world that he absolutely isn’t prepared for at such a young age. His mother finds a new boyfriend, who turns out to be awful (an understatement). He has to watch her struggle with losing her own autonomy which, for a boy whose mother is his entire world, is difficult to say the least. Then the unthinkable happens and she’s gone altogether. Our young MC is left alone in a world that wants to break him, with his sole caretaker being a man who resents his very existence.
What follows is a story that follows Demon along his many trials. He meets all sorts of people, some so good for him and most a terrible influence. In the most formative years of his life, he is shuttled from place to place and relying on the very bare minimum of kindness from others to get by. I’m not even going to lie to you, this book made me sob. Kingsolver pulls no punches when talking about Demon’s life in the foster system, and the fact that he and his friends were struggling so hard while being so young really just broke me. Those good people, those shining lights in the darkness, kept both Demon and I going. But watching him be continuously beaten down by a world that didn’t care at all about him was tough as hell.
I can’t go any further into the story without spoiling some very important things. This is a journey that you have to be willing to go on, despite the potential for a lot of bleaker moments. I’d love to say that Demon gets through it all unscathed, but that’s a fairy tale isn’t it? Nothing we encounter in life truly leaves us unchanged. We can learn to overcome it, sure. But it’s always a part of us. What I can say is that this book is a heartbreakingly beautiful look at the power it takes to keep moving forward despite everything. I loved how well this showed the reasons why people go back to the places they called home, even when those places didn’t treat them as well as they should. By the time I finished this book, I felt more connected to Demon than I have to any character in a long time.
So if you’re in the headspace for a book that is pretty heavy, and will likely make you cry, but also make you ponder so many thing? Demon Copperhead is a book you should add to your list. Kudos to Barbara Kingsolver. All the awards this book won were very, very well deserved.
