I was in two minds about this book the whole way through. It felt so dense and hard going that I frequently decided to give up on it but then I went back as I wanted to know how Demon Copperfield's life worked out. It's a re-working of David Copperfield set in modern day in the Appalachian Mountains. I'm not familiar with the story of David Copperfield but that didn't make any difference to my enjoyment (and at times endurance) of this book.

I can see why people love Barbara Kingsolver's writing as there is a richness and intensity to it. It's not a book I found I could skim read as sometimes a single sentence seemed to have a positive mine of information in it. Demon is the main character in the story and we follow his life from birth to reaching adulthood. It's a sad life as he is born into a very impoverished neighbourhood and then passed from foster home to foster home after he is orphaned. It makes for a depressing read at times but there are also redeeming moments when he meets decent people who care for him. There is also a lot of local slang to the area and a lot of talk about drug use in young children which is not an easy read.

With thanks to NetGalley and Faber and Faber Ltd. for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5026296032

Really enjoyed this one, although the penny only dropped that it was a retelling of David Copperfield when I read the afterword at the end.

Just like the other Barbara Kingsolver I've read (the Poisonwood Bible), it was easy to read, I identified with the characters and it was a real page turner.

Perhaps this one suffered slightly by comparison with PB by only being written from a single point of view, which made it slightly monotonous at points. But that's a small gripe in the context of a beautifully written book that I was able to really immerse myself in.

This is an epic tale of a boy born into poverty and drug culture and of damaged children.
Barbara Kingsolver was inspired by Dickens' novel David Copperfield and she has very cleverly transposed this into a very modern novel, as shown by her very first sentence -"First I got myself born" which is the equivalent of Dickens' first chapter heading - "I am born".
It is not a comfortable read as it follows Demon through his early life - family, foster care and employer abuse until he escapes to become a famous high school football champion. Unfortunately he then falls into Oxycontin drug abuse.
Each episode is a modern version of similar episodes in Dickens' novel e.g. where David Copperfield is sent to Salem House boarding school, Demon is placed in foster on Creaky's farm and forced to cut tobacco before and after school. All her chapters are modelled on those of Dickens.
Kingsolver wanted to highlight the terrible opioid addiction and related deaths that occur in the state of Virginia, consequently her novel is set in Southern Appalachia, where she actually lives instead of Victorian Southern England. Through reading the book you begin to appreciate the history and landscape of this area and the characters who live there- rednecks, moonshiners and ridge runners. As always Kingsolver's characters are fully developed and the reader will either love or hate them.
This an epic and very powerful story and sometimes a difficult read invoking feelings of outrage. But it will stay with the reader for a long time to come and will surely be a future prize winner.
Thank you to NetGalley for my advance copy.

I have to be honest this is one of the first books i have read by Barbara Kingsolver, i can honestly say i absolutely loved this book.
it was raw and emotional, i really connected with Demon he was human and lived a real life and not all whimsical and fairy tales.
If you liked Shuggie Bain you will love this.

i am a huge fan of Barbara Kingsolver and this book did not disappoint. Damon born to a drug addicted teenage mother, quickly assumes the mantle Demon.While he never gets to know his father, Coppperhead, he loses his Mother at ten and ends up in care. Your heart goes out to him and the truly awful things that befall him and others in a badly functioning social care system. He accepts his lot with such humour which helps make this such a great read

This was a DNF for me - very rare, but at only halfway through I felt I had been reading it for a year without really getting anywhere. The characterisation is good, and Kingsolver captures Demon's voice really well, but it wasn't for me.

I know it’s non-fiction November (and I will be reviewing a few non-fiction titles this month hopefully!) but I’m starting the month with a review of what is potentially my favourite novel this year.

Demon Copperhead is Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel. Many of you will have read some of her earlier brilliant award-winning works - The Poisonwood Bible won the Pulitzer Prize and appears on a lot of all time favourites lists, I loved it myself. The Lacuna, also brilliant, won the Orange Prize (now @womensprize). This one is completely different from anything she’s ever written (that I’ve read anyway) but I expect to see it on awards lists over the coming year.

Inspired by Dickens’ David Copperfield, Demon Copperhead is an epic novel set in the southern Appalachians, a rural backwater decimated by the opioid crisis.

Our narrator Demon (real name Damon) is born into terrible poverty to an addict mother and a father who’s already dead. The book follows his life and times as he works amidst the trash, passed from foster home to foster home, displaying an inner resilience that belies the absolute shitstorm that is his life.

The book is brimful of colourful characters, stunningly beautiful prose and a vibrant setting, with insights into life in rural America and the forgotten communities ravaged by Purdue Pharma and their ilk.

Most of all though, Kingsolver has created an unforgettable voice in Demon Copperhead, who will stay with me forever. I was completely immersed in this book for most of it. I think I cried for the last twenty pages. A masterpiece, and I don’t say that lightly. 5/5⭐️

*Demon Copperhead was published on 18 October and is widely available in all good bookshops and your local libraries. I was delighted to receive an ARC from the publisher @faberbooks via @netgalley. I’ve bought my own copy. As always, this is an honest review.*

4.5 stars

As a retelling of a classic, Demon Copperhead reads like a classic, which is always rough for me. I don’t know if it’s just a mental block now, but it took at least three times longer than it should have to read this book - especially considering how much I was enjoying it. This writing is dense but in the best way.

"A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing. If you get past that and grown, it's easiest to forget about the misery and pretend you knew all along what you were doing."

Demon’s narrative is so brutally honest it hurts to read at times. His life is incredibly difficult, but he has such a strong sense of self that he just shoulders it. Whatever is going on, he’s been through worse, or it could have been worse - even if you, as the reader, think it couldn’t possibly. But Demon shrugs, says he should’ve appreciated something more, and moves on to the next soul-shattering event. My heart broke over and over for this young boy taking care of his mother, going through foster homes, and trying to find his place in the world. It feels like nothing will work out for him, but nothing keeps him down for long.

"Kid born to the junkie is a junkie. He'll grow up to be everything you don't want to know, the rotten teeth and dead-zone eyes, the nuisance of locking up your tools in the garage so they don't walk off, the rent-by-the-week motel squatting well back from the scenic highway. This kid, if he wanted a shot at the finer things, should have got himself delivered to some rich or smart or Christian, nonusing type of mother. Anybody will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Demon's perspective on his childhood, on the poverty, grief, and addiction he has experienced, is remarkable. He’s able to appreciate the little he has and to look forward to the next win, no matter how small. His sense of loyalty is unflappable, and once he’s committed, nothing can drag him away - often to his own detriment. The people in his community and his life come from the many paths he’s been forced down, and he’s the type of person who has had to get along with everyone to survive.

"I've tried in this telling, time and again, to pinpoint the moment where everything starts to fall apart. Everything, meaning me. But there's also the opposite, where some little nut cracks open inside you and a tree starts to grow. Even harder to nail. Because that thing's going to be growing a long time before you notice. Years maybe. Then one day you say, Huh, that little crack between my ears has turned into this whole damn tree of wonderful."

Even though it took way too long to read, it will live rent-free in my head for much longer. Demon is not a character you forget, and his story is not one to be ignored. And while I’ll have to add David Copperfield to my TBR now (and probably set aside a month to get through it), I can’t see how the original could be better than the retelling in this case.

What to say about this astonishingly powerful book? I’ve never read nothing quite like it, although as a longtime fan of Barbara Kingsolver I knew it would be a marvel of excellent characterisation, settings so clearly described that they become visible to the reader, and writing of such skill as to leave this reviewer in awe. Demon Copperhead began life as a boy with nothing going for him at all - the son of a drug addicted Mother, it was miraculous that he even survived. The story takes us through his life from the start, and his is a life with more agony and less love than anyone should have to endure. It’s difficult to say much without spoilers, but this is a story of our times, and a very brilliant one at that, just as Dickens’ story of David Copperfield on which this book is based was a story of its time too.

An intense read that will bring your emotions tumbling out. Copperhead seeks love in a place where it is truly lacking but he is bent on survival . Born to a teenage inadequate mother in the Appalachian mountains in a mining community. He ends up in foster care initially where he is treated like an animal but does eventually find solace and help enabling his survival. A grim story with a clear message

Wallowed in it from start to finish and have to admit I hadn’t read anything about it being a Kingsolver take of David Copperfield so was not influenced by that narrative at all. I can see it now that I’ve read the Acknowledgement but I’m glad I didn’t know beforehand.
Barbara Kingsolver is just a wonderful writer and I can simply never get enough of wonderful writers.

It has been a while since I have read any Kingsolver, but I am very fond of her ability to write very accessible narratives which are at their heart transporting and campaigning. There are a number of of holidays of the last twenty years which feature a wallow in one of her big books, and whilst the conceit behind Demon Copperhead made me wary, I went in with a lot of trust. Bear in mind all I knew of the conceit was the title, a shonky play on David Copperfield, the follow-through of which was confirmed by the first line: "First, I got myself born" (which Dickens, in his way gets to in his third sentence but as direct and playful a take on the personal history genre outside of Tristram Shandy). There are 64 chapters here and the situation and theme might be different but it follows Copperfield pretty closely. But this is one of those exercises which weirdly brings out the best in a writer. Can Kingsolver (67) get herself into the head of an 18-year-old writing about his terrible life in the late nineties, whilst also fitting the narrative constraints of a Victorian serialised novel.? Yep, she can.

So David Copperfield become Damon "Demon" Copperhead (the latter a nickname due to red hair), growing up poor in the Appalachian mountains. Kingsolver is mainly painting her ire here at the opiate crisis, though thebasic underpinning of poverty and structural under-development of old mining communities come out along with some more complex ideas about the difference between money people and land people. Demon is an artist, as opposed to David's writer), but still manages to use his art as escapism even whentrapped in an oxy addiction. The book is broadly about addiction whatever happens, most of the deaths are related one way or another, Demon's mother is a mix of pills and booze, and meth isn't far away. The books source allows this to be an eventual happy story, and Demon's personality never allows this to get too dark, but its is clear from the way Kingsolver sets up the traps that Demon's survival is a mixture of good fortune and perseverence.

Kingsolver is having fun here, even with her serious topic, and mentions in her afterword essay how much of Dickens was easy to adapt. She also states it was hard to get the names right as she pulls them across time and space, and she certainly seems uncomfortable making Uriah Heap as much as a villain as Dickens does (or at least does not take as much glee in describing his grotesquery- or it might be just U-Haul Piles was a step too far in translation). It reminded me, oddly, of the Isabel Allende Zorro, something that seems counter-intuative for such a well known writer, but actual challenges and brings out their strengths. Demon Copperhear knows that Demon Copperhead is a poor transcription of David Copperfield, and uses that tongue in cheek to make its actual story zing along, taking the original as a broad road map to be filled with 90's analogs and to show as much as the more things change the more they stay the same.

Kingsolver on top form: a glorious and searing riff on the Dickens original, which also manages to render the awful Dora quite feasible (a feat in itself). Highly recommended; it's a difficult thing to pull off, but she more than manages it. Heartbreaking, angry, fabulous.

Pretty close to perfection. Definitely her best book yet. Likely to make my top ten ever. Both brilliantly written and utterly absorbing - great story and engaging characters you love and hate in equal measure. Savage but unputdownable

Described as a retelling of ‘David Copperfield’ this novel has, as its main character, a child. We follow him from a hard start in life as he learns difficult and often harrowing lessons along the way. Not always an easy read and certainly doesn’t offer much in the way of happiness but is non the less an extremely well written and thought provoking read.

Demon Copperhead is the ninth novel by award-winning best-selling American author, Barbara Kingsolver. It’s in August of his eleventh year that life falls apart for Damon Fields. Despite his inauspicious beginning and life in a double-wide trailer with his single mother, his first ten years are happy ones.

With strong Melungeon features, flame red hair, green eyes and darker skin, inherited from a father who died before he was born, Damon soon acquires the name Copperhead, Demon being the natural warp of his given name. A good student with a talent for drawing, he excels at school and enjoys spending his free time with his best friend, Maggot, grandson of his mother’s landlady, Nance Peggot.

The catalyst for change seems to be the arrival into their lives of Murrell Stone, known as Stoner, whom Damon quickly assesses as bad news. That he is a bully, expert in gaslighting, is soon obvious: “Mom took up with a guy that believed in educating with his fists, that bullied and brainwashed her till the day she died.”

By the time he arrives in his father’s hometown in Tennessee, the now-eleven-year-old has suffered the physical and psychological abuse of his new step-father, lost his pregnant mother, been fostered out into two differently neglectful homes, done hard physical labour, worked an illegal job, missed school to harvest tobacco, been half-starved, and robbed.

From there, the story follows Demon’s rollercoaster fortunes in life: patronage from his paternal grandmother, a football coach and an art teacher; recognition of his talents and abilities; injury and drug addiction; the deterioration and loss of people close to him. He proves to be resilient, and eventually learns that not all the people he chooses end up being true friends.

With her reinvented David Copperfield set in modern-day Appalachia, Kingsolver illustrates the potent impact on young lives of the poor choices that people themselves make, or are made by those charged with their care, often when there is, realistically, no choice at all.

When those people in his life who have good intentions but no means are unable to step up, her protagonist ends up at the mercy of people rorting the welfare system for their own gain or merely their survival, under the supposed care of poorly-paid and under-resourced people stuck in a poorly funded and disorganised system. All of this will feel wholly realistic to those with experience of said system.

Shown, too, is the Appalachian(?) mindset perpetuated by some teachers at less well-off schools that their students lack the intelligence to compete academically with richer schools. This can result is students believing, often to their detriment, injury-wise, that sport or unskilled labour is their only option. Credibly presented is the casually indiscriminate use of prescribed narcotics in teens with its ensuing downward spiral into addiction, and also the power of the intelligent cartoon.

Damon’s feels like an authentic voice which gives the story added credibility. Kingsolver gives her young protagonist insight: “A mean side to people comes out at such times, where their only concern is what did the misfortunate person do to put themselves in their sorry fix. They’re building a wall to keep out the bad luck.”

And makes him perceptive: “A dead parent is a tricky kind of ghost. If you can make it into more like a doll, putting it in the real house and clothes and such that they had, it helps you to picture them as a person instead of just a person-shaped hole in the air. Which helps you feel less like a person-shaped invisible kid.”

And, of course, the reader can rely on Kingsolver for gorgeous descriptive prose: “I found a good rock and watched the sun melt into the Cumberlands. Layers of orange like a buttermilk pie cooling on the horizon. Clouds scooting past, throwing spots of light and dark over the mountainheads. The light looked drinkable. It poured on a mountain so I saw the curve of every treetop edged in gold, like the scales of a fish. Then poured off, easing them back into shadow.”

Many of Dickens’ characters are easily identifiable by their slightly altered names and roles; several are sterling characters, although the one with that name is the polar opposite. Those familiar with it will find elements of the story somewhat reminiscent of AB Facey’s memoir A Fortunate Life. Included is a bonus essay revealing Kingsolver’s inspiration for this tale. Moving and thought-provoking: a wonderful read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Faber & Faber.

Just as Charles Dickens’ novel ‘David Copperfield’ has at its centre a child who is blown and buffeted through many misfortunes, who makes unwise choices and learns hard lessons, so does Barbara Kingsolver’s eponymous hero, Demon Copperhead make the same chaotic journey. Set in today’s world in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, Kingsolver gives the reader an unsentimental depiction of people of all ages crippled by addiction – be it opioids or alcohol - and the tough conditions in which they live.
This sounds grim, and there are many distressing moments in the novel. However, Demon’s voice heard through a convincing, pragmatic, reflective, sometimes funny, sometimes heart-breaking first-person narrative, is what raises this novel to another level and makes it so memorable. It’s clear that, in a society where hardship is the norm, the cycle of deprivation is almost impossible to break. As Demon ponders, ‘’Many had tried their best with us, but we came out of too-hungry mothers. Four demons spawned by four different starving mothers.’’
Whilst Kingsolver has borrowed the plot of Dickens’ 1849 novel, she is not a slave to the storyline, adapting it superbly within a contemporary setting. It really isn’t necessary to have read ‘David Copperfield’ to fully appreciate ‘Demon Copperhead’ but it’s fun to see what she does with the original characters and how she uses key episodes of her literary inspiration.
This novel captivates, moves, educates and entertains the reader without resorting to Dickens’ occasionally mawkish scenes. Whilst the ‘cohabiting with Dori’ section feels a little drawn out, maybe it just reflects the ‘no escape’ world of those battling addiction. And the ending? Perfection!
My thanks to NetGalley and Faber and Faber Ltd for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

I tried. I really tried but I just couldn’t finish this book. I probably got just over half way through and I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t care enough about Demon and therein lies the problem. This is his story. Unfortunately I just didn’t want to read it.

I am seldom at a loss for words when offering a book review but this is one of those times.

If only half of what is described in this book is based around fact, it is a scary indictment of just one aspect of Americans' attitude to those less fortunate.

All I can say is that this growing up and coming of age book is amazing, worth a 6 Star (sic) rating and recommend that you add it right at the top of your reading list.

Barbara Kingsolver rarely writes short books. ‘Demon Copperhead’ is no exception. However, as is often the case, Kingsolver manages to hold the readers attention and propel the narrative forward beautifully.

Drawing on the structure and themes of David Copperfield, Kingsolver depicts the life of Damon/Demon. Set in what others cast as “red neck” America, Damon is born to a single mother in a trailer. Due to institutional poverty, stigma and the miss selling of opioid medication he is forced to deal with repeated bereavements, foster care, child labour, addiction, maltreatment and neglect. However, despite his nickname, Damon remains the positive hero of this tale.

Whilst there is a strong moral to this story, this doesn’t stop it from being a very enjoyable and absorbing read. Damon’s narration is strong and the other characters in the novel are really well depicted. The story becomes pacier in the second half, but the events from Damon’s childhood are so central to the novel that they need to be depicted in that level of detail, This is a book that is worth the commitment.