Demonically Good: Demon Copperead

A Book Review and a Humble View on Christmas

Charles Dickens, author of "A Christmas Carol" and "The Chimes", is the godfather of Christmas stories. With her latest novel, Barbara Kingsolver draws on another of Dickens´ famous novels. In "Demon Copperhead", she tackles the issues of the American opioid epidemic and neglected foster children in the Appalachian mountains. This latest novel of hers will change your view on childhood poverty forever - as on how different Christmas can be.

If you think your festive season has been stressful, it´s worth taking a look left and right to see what other people´s Christmases look like. And of course, time for a bit of reading.

---

Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead

Touching, devastating, and eye-opening. Demon Copperhead´s story stays with you long after you will have put the book down. Social justice and child labor, the terrible problem of widespread opioid abuse, friendship, heroism, and loyalty - Kingsolver´s novel is rich in all of these issues and a deserving winner of the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction as well as co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The son of a deceased father and a drug-addicted teenage mom, we meet our child narrator Demon Copperhead at the age of 10. In rural Virginia, Demon spends most of his time with his neighbors, where he feels safe, loved, and seen.

Things spiral down very quickly when his mom marries a brutal motorcyclist who makes his life miserable by putting him down with cruel language, and later on, cruel deeds. His mother relapses, and Demon is sent to live in a foster home, which hardly deserves the name "home". Rather it´s a farm full of young boys working like donkeys for well, a donkey of a man.

The only thing that keeps Demon going is the company of the other boys. One of them prides himself in giving out nicknames that describe the core of each child's soul. Our sensitive redhead is honored with the name Diamond, which makes him feel worthy and hopeful, a new sensation for him.

In a way, the book inspired by Charles Dickens's novel David Copperfield is full of hyperboles. But the story works. And it works very well.

Whenever you think things cannot get any worse, they do. For example, his mother overdoses on his very birthday. His next foster home is devoid of any compassion or warmth. Demon is kept in a store room, smelling of pee, as it was once the home of puppies - dog breeding being one of the foster father's many failed businesses.

At 12 years old, Demon is the size of a 15-year-old. Not only does he not get enough food. He has to work for his foster family, to make ends meet and support his supposed guardians. It's a crappy job, in the worst sense of the word, and he unwittingly helps out in a meth lab, putting his health at risk. Demon has no time to study because he spends all his free time working, and consequently, he falls behind in his schooling.

Demon runs away, hoping to find his grandmother, taking some of the money he has earned with him, only to be robbed by a whore. Eventually, he does find her. After a brief time, she takes him to live with a football coach and his daughter.

Things take a turn for the better: Big, strong Demon turns into a local football star.

This may be a cliché, yes, but also such a relief. The kind reader can only be thankful for it, as well as for his friendship with his foster sister. It is with her that he experiences his first happy Christmas Eves, full of friendship and caring, anticipation and joy.

It turns out to be but a short-lived relief, as it turns out since he develops an all-consuming opioid addiction after a painful knee injury.

It´s easy to forgive Kingsolver for any clichés or hyperbolic storytelling. The book is a journey well worth taking. The story unfolds very believably, as Kingsolver tells it in such a way that is so real, so raw - it touches you to the core. It makes you want to jump right into the story and get the boy out of there.

Spoiler ahead. In the end, after a long journey full of suffering, he does get out. In the end, I feel exhausted.

The book allows us eye-opening, disturbing insights into opioid-ridden America, its victims, and their loved ones. Demon Copperhead will stay with me just as the many ghostly protagonists that have been introduced to me, like Oliver Twist, Anne Frank, Christiane F. His strength, integrity, and kind heart have helped him go through hell. Barbara Kingsolver has created yet another unforgettable hero.

Image source: Road Trip with Raj, Dave Adamson, Joseph Cantwell, and Dawn Geddis - all via Unsplash.