Book review: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver,  Faber Books.

I came late to the winner of last year`s Women`s Prize for Fiction and co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. But migawd, I just devoured the book, all 548 pages of the contemporised retelling of Dickens` tale of institutionalised poverty and its impact on children, David Copperfield,  that hews close to the OG story yet hews its own unique path in the annals of great fiction. David here is Damon/Demon Fields, a boy of partial  Melungeon ancestry, born to a crackhead but loving mother in a rented trailer home in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.

Nothing promising stretches out before this copper-headed,  green-eyed little boy, except for a life of poverty, abuse from a cruel stepfather, moving from one set of unfeeling foster parents to another and yet another. But make no mistake, `Demon Copperhead` is a tale of rising above all odds, of finding love and joy in very hard places, if I may be permitted to tweak Rihanna`s song, a gritty tale of survival. With Demon being the narrator, in between the accounts of hunger, neglect, nil social justice, rampant drug use,  there are pockets of wit and charm, self-deprecating humour and heart-moving  side stories of courage and resilience, along with the complete absence of expected cynicism.  I`d use three words to sum up the book: Charming. Powerful. Moving. I`d say, just read it if you haven’t already.

And in one clever but amusing twist , Demon comes upon Charles Dickens` works  in school. This is what he has to say of the writer: “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 giving a rat’s ass. You’d think he was from around here.”

I`d use three words to sum up the book: Charming. Powerful. Moving. I`d say, just read it if you haven’t already.