Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

genre: fiction

Background that only matters to me, probably: when I heard about this book initially, I was vaguely intrigued.  I've always loved Kingersolver's work but then I saw how long it was and THEN I knew that if I wanted to have the best experience when reading it, that I should read David Copperfield FIRST.  And that one is also SO LONG.  So I put it in my backpocket until this past Christmas when this beautiful colorful cover on a paperback edition was on the table at the bookstore and I knew it was meant to be.  I had to read this book and it had to be THIS particular edition.  Of course, I DID do David first and IT WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE.  READ D.C. BY DICKENS FIRST.  It will make what she's done in this novel feel like an actual marvel of the written word.

Demon.  Born to a single mama in Lee County.  His home: a rented single wide trailer in the hills of this nowhere Appalachian backwater.  From his first breath, Demon is fighting for a chance to have enough.  Because in this part of the world, having enough is just not a given, not when your mama is strung out to her last thread and there isn't anyone else to be in charge of you.  Told in the same first-person narrative as David C., Demon has a unique voice: snarky and crass and tender, all at the same time.  I wasn't two pages in before I went to get a pen and I knew I'd be reading with one for all 546 pages.  The writing is that good.  Demon's story is a tale of heartache and child labor, the foster system and small town schools and the kind of pain that can sweep over a valley and burn it down to stubble.  It's the story of all the kids who get lost in the mechanized hamster wheel of CPS, who need to be loved and allowed to be children, just like everyone else.  And when you can't just be a kid, you work it out yourself, like Demon does.  But the consequences will rip your heart out. 

I am floored by this novel. By how she took the mean-streets-living Victorian London of David Copperfield and plunked it into an Appalachian town and retold this story in the most lyrical, beautiful and depressing way.  In Demon, she especially created a character with the kind of wit and foul-mouth that can surprise you with his tenderness.  I rooted for Demon, right from the start.  I rooted for him all through the horrible things that happened to him and then the horrible choices he made because of how broken he'd become.  OH the ache when I could see things coming - both because I knew what had happened in Dicken's tale but also because this is modern history and we know what has happened to forgotten souls in these places of poverty and disenfranchisement.  Kingsolver does SUCH a good job of making you find compassion for those who call Lee County home, despite it seeming to be a one way ticket to nowhere - and she explains through the voices of her characters how it came to be what it is.  The way she's created modern characters that parallel the ones in Copperfield is so, so good.  Plus, they are WAY less verbose here and that was much appreciated.  

It's not going to be for everyone.  There is everything horrible here that you can imagine in terms of the underbelly of the world, and Demon does not mince words.  This boy doesn't only spell it all out, he draws us the upsetting picture too -  the kind of pictures that we can't look away from.  We watch him go to dark and upsetting places but we want so much for him to make it back out okay, we stick by his side.  We see where he's going to be able to find redemption, if he'll just grab onto it.  And then, when he does - you feel like you yourself have washed off the filth of years and the rainclouds have parted.  

It's a work of art, this book.  And while not for everyone, it is absolutely for me.