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 does Demon as a cartoonist. And here too there is a Leopold connection. Kingsolver was contracted by Oxford University Press to write the Introduction to the latest edition of A Sand County Almanac. In a noble effort to make Leopold relatable to her elite-phobic neighbors, she stoops to ignoble misrepresentation…
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster…
Meta fiction can be so "on purpose" and coy ... but this novel, picking up the thread of THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, and made it into an astonishing, brilliant kite of what could be wished for, what could be true ... everything a story should be!
'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha
James by Percival Everett is a profound and ferociously funny meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. From the author of The Trees, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Erasure, adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.
The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new…
Wow! In this historical novel, Labatut has developed a totally original structure and writing style. I had barely heard of the polymath John von Neumann, but each aspect of math and science that he touched was indelibly changed forever. Programmable computers, artificial intelligence, you name it. Science, for better and for worse – a stroke of genius, then again, madness. Logic led von Neumann to the theory for nuclear deterrence of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). And the policymakers listened. Labatut builds his story solely through the eyes of those who knew John, whether family, friends, colleagues, or rivals. This novel is a tour-de-force that raises questions about science as it simultaneously furthers and threatens existence.
From the author of When We Cease to Understand the World: a dazzling, kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AIJohnny von Neumann was an enigma. As a young man, he stunned those around him with his monomaniacal pursuit of the unshakeable foundations of mathematics. But when his faith in this all-encompassing system crumbled, he began to put his prodigious intellect to use for those in power. As he designed unfathomable computer systems and aided the development of the atomic bomb, his work pushed increasingly into areas that were beyond human comprehension and control…
