{"id":9920,"date":"2023-06-11T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9920"},"modified":"2023-06-14T16:24:06","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T20:24:06","slug":"demon-copperhead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/11\/demon-copperhead\/","title":{"rendered":"Demon Copperhead."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Barbara Kingsolver shared this year\u2019s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction \u2013 the first time the honor was split among two books \u2013 for her novel Demon Copperhead<\/a><\/em>, which shared the honor with Hernan Diaz\u2019s Trust<\/em>. Demon Copperhead<\/em> borrows its structure and characters from Charles Dickens\u2019s David Copperfield<\/em>, transplanting the whole story to a poor mining county in the Appalachians, narrated by its title character from his early childhood to adulthood as the opioid crisis devastates his community, family, and his own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demon is born to a single mother in Lee County, where the mining industry employed nearly everyone and then left them underemployed, injured, and increasingly addicted to painkillers. Demon, whose real name is Damon but acquired the nickname \u201cDemon\u201d early in life and had it stick, never knows any stability from the word go \u2013 his mother is a recovering addict, marries a local tough guy who terrorizes her and abuses Demon, only to have his mother die and his stepdad toss him out into the hands of social services. His path takes him through two foster homes, including the con-artist McCobbs, then to his estranged grandmother\u2019s house, then back to Lee County and the high school football team, only to have a knee injury push him into the bottomless well of oxycontin. It\u2019s a parade of tragedies interspersed with dark humor, leading towards eventual small triumphs, told by one of the most memorable narrator characters I\u2019ve ever encountered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you know the bones of David Copperfield<\/em>, from the book or perhaps from Armando Iannucci\u2019s faithful 2020 film adaptation<\/a>, then you\u2019ll know the general plot outline of Demon Copperhead<\/em>, as it adheres to the former book\u2019s major story beats right to the end. Almost every character here has a clear analogue in the original \u2013 Demon is David, the McCobbs are the Micawbers, U-Haul is Uriah Heep, and so forth \u2013 that also provides the foundation for the modern versions, although they\u2019re fleshed out enough to feel different from the originals. You could see U-Haul becoming Demon\u2019s main antagonist early on, especially once you connect him to Uriah, but the way in which this plays out is different enough from the original to make it seem new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This novel\u2019s real strength is Demon, though. Kingsolver has given him a unique voice that combines the wisdom of his experiences through the story, the na\u00efvet\u00e9 of his place of birth, and layers of empathy that appear at surprising times throughout the work. Kingsolver has used interesting narrative techniques before, as in The Poisonwood Bible<\/a><\/em>, but here she does so with a single character who is thoroughly developed, who grows and learns throughout the novel, and whose flaws are right there on display even in his own telling. David Copperfield is someone you root for throughout Dickens\u2019s novel because he\u2019s so inherently good, and his travails are the result of encounters with terrible people and the extreme economic inequality of England in the early 1800s. Demon is more complex, making poor choices, sometimes to the point of treating people who care for him quite badly, even missing out on opportunities and lifelines. It\u2019s a little harder to root for him, although ultimately I came down on that side, bearing in mind that it was clear where things were all going to end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n <\/script> \n \n\n\n\n

Dickens\u2019s work was a social commentary on that inequality and the abysmal treatment of the poor, especially children, in his era, a theme he\u2019d first covered in Oliver Twist <\/em>and would return to many times in the later parts of his life. Kingsolver does the same here, with two focal points \u2013 the opioid epidemic and its main drivers in Purdue Pharmaceuticals; and the abandonment of rural people by nearly every stage of government, from counties and school districts up to the federal level. It\u2019s not subtle by any means, and that\u2019s been a criticism of the book, but I don\u2019t know how you can be subtle about the harm that opioids have wreaked on these parts of the country. Kingsolver delivers the commentary in the most granular fashion, by showing the epidemic\u2019s impact on individual characters and their families, most notably children neglected, abused, or left orphaned by those addicted, with scant discussion of policy questions or legal maneuvers. Purdue gets its mention, but mostly because Demon\u2019s Aunt June briefly dates a guy who\u2019s a sales rep for the company, and for the rest of the book they\u2019re an offscreen villain, while every form of government is asleep at its respective wheel. It\u2019s very Dickensian in a contemporary way, trading the workhouse for rehab, sharing its disdain for the central government\u2019s failure to protect its most vulnerable charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s an arduous read because of all of the slings and arrows Demon suffers along the way, but Kingsolver does it more concisely than Dickens, and with such a compelling voice as the narrator that it\u2019s both quicker than its page count would imply and more enjoyable than you\u2019d think for a story where people do horrible things to each other and themselves. The adult Damon\u2019s wry, wise telling of his own life is what truly powered me through the book so quickly. And with such a distinctly American plot and setting, it\u2019s a worthy winner of the Pulitzer honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up: Susanna Hoffs, one of my favorite musicians of the 1980s and early 1990s, just released her first novel, This Bird Has Flown<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barbara Kingsolver shared this year\u2019s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction \u2013 the first time the honor was split among two books \u2013 for her novel Demon Copperhead, which shared the honor with Hernan Diaz\u2019s Trust. Demon Copperhead borrows its structure and characters from Charles Dickens\u2019s David Copperfield, transplanting the whole story to a poor mining county […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,36,938,684,161,252,1348],"class_list":["post-9920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adaptations","tag-american-literature","tag-books","tag-contemporary-novels","tag-highly-recommended","tag-pulitzer-prize","tag-womens-prize-for-fiction","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9921,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9920\/revisions\/9921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}