Demon Copperhead

Inspired by Dickens - not just 'David Copperfield' but also with hints of the adamantly innocent Oliver Twist - this is a highly original and absorbing novel. By using the first person, the author gets us on Demon's side and draws us into his predicaments, enabling us to understand something of the reality and tragedy of the opioid crisis in a way that avoids preaching. So absorbing was this novel that I not only didn't want it to end but I also found the next few books I read both tame and lacking in verve.

I have always loved David Copperfield and this book is a remarkable re-imagining of that story in a way that captivated and held me hostage until the last page. I was literally unable to put it down.

The spotlight falls on the child of a dysfunctional family and a flawed mother who succeed in their own way despite their failings. I also admired how Kingsolver reset the story in modern times with current issues front and center. She is one of my favorite writers, and this book may be her best. 

I grew up in rural America not far from where the novel is set. Many things in the book, unfortunately, rang true to me.

It was breathtakingly original to take the story of David Copperfield to this level. The book was disturbing, chaotic, long, and complicated. I felt as if I suffered along with Demon, the main character. I've never been disappointed with a Barbara Kingsolver book and this book was no exception. Her writing challenges me to reach as a writer.

The opioid epidemic isn't a novel topic for me, and neither is addiction. Still, Kingsolver humanized her characters in a way that brought me to a much deeper level of understanding and empathy for the people who suffer with and die from opioid addiction --and their loved ones.

Although a work of fiction, Demon Copperhead is a truer hillybilly elegy than the book of that title. Barbara Kingsolver’s tale of a boy named Damon, born of a drug- and alcohol-addicted teenaged mother and a copperheaded predeceased father, tracks the storyline of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. Copperfield is set in the urban wasteland of Victorian London, Copperhead in the rural wasteland of American Coal Country, where the author herself resides. Conflict with a stepdad lands Demon in foster care and passed around from one exploiter of the system to another. As David finds eventual success as a writer, so… show more.

A retelling of David Copperfield, this was such a well written book that really brought home so many social issues that plague American life right now, without beating you over the head with them.

The voice of the main character was so authentic. The other characters were also very believeable.

This book truly fit the description of "the great American novel." Well written, great characters, illuminating a slice of America many don't understand or see clearly.

I found this compulsively readable as a narrative even though, because it’s a sort of retelling of David Copperfied, it was familiar in its outlines. There are plenty of surprises along the way even if you know the earlier novel.

Part of the pleasure is in seeing how the author has transposed the story from Victorian England to Virginia in the recent past. It completely avoids the sentimentality that is in the Dickens original, and yet the account of Demon’s harsh childhood is unflinching.

Born into poverty, of uncertain parentage, and exploited and mistreated by his school, his employers, and… show more.