Demon Copperhead didn’t really grab my attention with its description or cover, even though I love Kingsolver’s early work, and a hardcover first edition of The Poisonwood Bible sits on my all-time favorites shelf. I happened to win this copy from an @oprahsbookclub giveaway, and decided to dive in after seeing all of the glowing reviews. And, damn. Who would’ve thought a novel would make me want to read David Copperfield! It was bad enough having to read A Tale of Two Cities in high school. TBD if I would identify with David as much as Demon, though.
It’s interesting that a number of novels I’ve read recently center around a Gen X character, like myself, drawing me in with the nostalgia. There’s a fair amount of that in this book, but it’s not the focus. Demon’s first person voice is the overarching triumph of this story: utterly delightful, hilarious, insightful (but also charmingly unself-aware), heartbreaking, and so very real. Using his voice to illustrate the realities of Appalachian families that were sacrificial lambs to the opioid crisis was pitch perfect in forcing outsiders understand and empathize with this atrocity. I could not help rooting for him and the equally colorful cast of characters drawn into his orbit.
Demon Copperhead read like Kingsolver’s earlier fiction - it contains a powerful message, but not a redundant or didactic one. It made me think, made me angry, and pulled at my heartstrings. Just an excellent book!

“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.”❤️