What is there left to say about award-winning Barbara Kingsolver that hasn’t already been said? She’s a brilliant writer, a skilled crafter of moving prose, she produces epic novels spanning ages of time yet manages to highlight every small detail and ensure it sings. I’ve read every work of her fiction and even quoted a line from THE LACUNA in my first novel. So why has it taken me so long to read her latest bestseller, DEMON COPPERHEAD (Harper Collins 2022)?
Good question. It’s that old chestnut – will this live up to the hype? Will it be as good as her other books? Will I finish the last page feeling that I know these characters intimately and absolutely love the protagonist and keep cheering them all on forever? The answer of course is yes, yes and yes.
Perhaps one other factor that delayed my reading of this amazing book was that while people told me how much they loved it (and how much I would love it), they also told me it was based on Charles Dickens’ DAVID COPPERFIELD and also examined the horrific American opioid crisis. Neither of these subjects appealed to me. They sounded dense, uncomfortable, heavy and possibly depressing. What I had forgotten, of course, is that Kingsolver can take ANY subject and write about it with clear-eyed hope and optimism, with grace, tenderness and warmth. Yes, this novel traverses tragic circumstances: children abandoned or orphaned by junkie parents dead or incarcerated; foster kids living in harrowing places that should not be called homes; the ever-present difficulties of poverty, unemployment, insecure housing, unstable families and a lack of role models. The very real class problem that exists in modern America. Hillbilly kids in country hick towns with no resources, no plans and no dreams. Kingsolver pulls no punches as she presents these circumstances. The drug-addled, the homeless, the dead-eyed stare of people with absolutely nothing, and even less to lose.
But somehow, with her magical capacity for capturing goodness, joy and hope, she fishes rocks out of this mire and burnishes them until they shine like diamonds. The complex web of interrelationships in DEMON COPPERHEAD is its saving grace – the people who are family, or who choose families, and the relationships that are forged through fire to be even stronger.
There is a lot of fire in this book. A lot of bad stuff happens. Unfortunately, Kingsolver reflects the abject misery of reality in many US towns. She doesn’t shy away, she doesn’t flinch. She presents the facts to us as readers and asks us not only to consider the consequences of the circumstances, but to engender empathy with those suffering, and to think about both small and larger ways in which the situation might become different, even better.
Set in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, amidst generations of poverty, violence, crime and addiction, luck plays a huge part in where your life begins, the direction you travel and where you end up. Demon’s traumatic birth (still in his sac, reputedly meaning he can never drown), to a single mother in a trashy trailer, is not a good start. He will need all his wit and charm, his physical attributes and some unexpected talents just to survive. Whether he thrives is another level of impossibility altogether.
Throughout the book, Demon’s dream is to see the ocean. At first this is a ridiculous absurdity, but as the narrative progresses, he attempts repeatedly to fulfil his dream. Does he get there? You’ll have to read the novel to find out.
And do please read it. Don’t be put off by the subject matter or density – every paragraph is delightfully readable and accessible, and when I closed the cover, I felt empathy and compassion seeping from my pores. Yes, there is anger and loss, and terrible unfairness, but there is also hope, truth, wonder and the indomitable human spirit.