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Author | Barbara Kingsolver |
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Language | English |
Publisher | Harper |
Publication date | October 18, 2022 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 560 |
Awards | Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Women's Prize for Fiction James Tait Black Memorial Prize |
ISBN | 978-0-06-325192-2 |
Demon Copperhead is a 2022 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Kingsolver was inspired by the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield . [1] [2] While Kingsolver's novel is similarly about a boy who experiences poverty, Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia and explores contemporary issues. [3] [4] [5]
The book touches on themes of the social and economic stratification in Appalachia, child poverty in rural America, and drug addiction with a focus on the opioid crisis. [6]
Damon Fields is born to a single teenage mother in a trailer home in Lee County, located in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. He has red hair, inherited from his dead father, who was a Melungeon. He is nicknamed "Demon Copperhead" for the colour of his hair and his attitude. (Copperhead referring to the colour as well as snake species). Demon is raised by his mother and their neighbours, the Peggots. The latter includes Mr. and Mrs. Peggot, who are old and are raising their grandchild Matt Peggot (nicknamed Maggot). Maggot and Demon are the same age and the two become best friends growing up.
When Demon is in primary school, his mother meets a trucker named Stoner and gets into a relationship with him. Over the summer, the Peggots take Demon on a trip to Knoxville, where he meets Maggot’s aunt June and his cousin Emmy. Upon his return, he discovers that his mother has married Stoner, following which Stoner’s behaviour becomes abusive. She relapses into her former drug addiction and ODs. Stoner pays for her to be sent to rehab. Demon’s DSS agent puts him in short-term foster care.
His foster home is at Creaky Farms, run by Mr. Crickson who also fosters three other kids: Tommy, Swap-Out, and Fast Forward. Tommy and Swap-Out are in primary school with Demon, while Fast Forward is in high-school playing as a quarterback for the Lee High School football team, the Generals. Demon's time at Creaky Farms is coloured by Crickson's mean demeanour, the squalid living conditions, and assisting with farm work. This includes the tobacco season, where the foster-children are forced to miss school and Demon gets nicotine poisoning from handling the plans without gloves. Fast Forward has a magnetic personality and holds influence over the other foster children, introducing them to drugs.
Demon's mom ODs again, on oxycontin, and dies. His time at Creaky Farms over, Demon decides to spend Christmas with the Peggots instead, and joins them uninvited on another trip to Knoxville. He discovers that June has decided to move back to Lee County from the city due to the fact that her colleagues demean her for being a 'redneck'.
After a second failed foster family, Demon decides to hitchhike to Murder Valley, Tennessee, where he hopes to find his paternal grandmother. En route, he meets a preacher, gets his money stolen by a prostitute, and sleeps in a barn. Finally, he reaches his grandmother, Betsy Woodall, a hardy old woman who lives with her disabled brother Dick who is confined to a wheelchair and cannot speak normally, but is sharp and well-read. Using her connections, she contacts the Coach of the Lee High Generals, who agrees to take Demon in. Demon moves to a mansion where he meets Coach, his daughter Angus, and a young man who assists the coach named U-Haul. Coach struggles with alcoholism, but recognises Demon's potential as a football player. He starts training him to be a tight end, and Demon eventually becomes a player for the Generals.
Demon learns about the history of the Appalachian Mountains and the coal miners from Mr. Armstrong, who tells them the story of the Battle of Blair Mountain. In the summer after he joins high school, Demon takes a job at a grocery store and meets Dori, a young girl his age who he instantly falls in love with. Dori's mother is dead and she has dropped out of school to take care of her ailing father. During one of the football games, Demon gets tackled and badly injures his knee. The team doctor puts him on oxycontin and Demon quickly gets addicted despite warnings from June. After a school dance, Demon and Dori drive to a spot where she gives Demon fentanyl that she has stolen from her dad.
Dori's father dies and she falls apart. Demon decides to drop out of school and move in with Dori. During this time, Emmy runs away with Fast Forward. After months of searching, June finds Emmy's location and rescues her alongside Maggot and Demon. June sends her to an expensive rehab facility. Angus calls Demon after U-Haul tries to sexually assault her. She has discovered that U-Haul has been framing Coach for embezzlement from the school. Angus and Demon manage to chase U-Haul away. Eventually, the scandal breaks, but Coach's reputation and Angus' intervention allows them to control the damage.
Dori grows increasingly disconnected, insecure, and thin. At one point, Dori says that she is pregnant but soon after seems to miscarry. Finally, Dori ODs and dies. Demon moves in with Maggot. On a particularly rainy day, Demon and Maggot are invited to go up to a waterfall called the Devil's Bathtub to meet Fast Forward, and they go there with Hammer Kelly. The following confrontation results in the deaths of both Hammer Kelly and Fast Forward. Maggot gets sent to juvenile prison for supplying Hammer with drugs before the incident. June sponsors Demon's stay at a rehab centre in Knoxville. Here, Demon resumes drawing and decides to make a graphic novel about the history of the Appalachian people. He stays in touch with Angus who is now at university in Nashville and develops feelings for her.
A year later, Demon and Angus catch up in Lee County and decide to drive down to the ocean so that Demon can finally see it. Demon realises she has feelings for him too.
Many of the characters in the book are inspired by characters in Dickens's David Copperfield . In the following list, the Dickensian characters are parenthesised:
According to the review aggregator website Book Marks, Demon Copperhead received mostly positive reviews from critics. [7] Ron Charles of The Washington Post praises Demon Copperhead as his "favorite novel of 2022" [6] as it is "equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love." [6] Writing for The Guardian , Elizabeth Lowry contends that "while the task of modernising [Dickens's] novel is complicated by the fact that mores have shifted so radically since the mid-19th century … the ferocious critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children is as pertinent as ever." [8] However, Lorraine Berry of The Boston Globe criticizes the novel as poverty porn, arguing that,
In seeking to raise awareness of child hunger and poverty in the United States, Kingsolver turns her characters’ lives into tales of misery and the inevitability of failure. Her characters wallow in dark hollows with little light, condemned to forever repeat the horrific mistakes of previous generations. She makes the people of Appalachia into objects of pity, but in doing so, also intimates that falling into drug abuse, rejecting education, and 'clinging' to their ways are moral choices. [9]
Demon Copperhead was named one of the "10 Best Books of 2022" by The Washington Post [10] and The New York Times . [11] The novel was named the recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction alongside Hernan Diaz's Trust ; this was the first time in its history that the award was shared. [12] It won the 2022 James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. [13] The novel was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. [14] In 2024, it was ranked #61 by the New York Times in its list of the best 100 books of the 21st century [15] and ranked #1 in its Reader's Picks List [16]
Barbara Kingsolver won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction for the novel, [17] [18] [19] making her the first author to win the prize twice; she had previously won in 2010 for The Lacuna. [20]
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during the preceding calendar year.
David Copperfield is a 1935 American film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer based upon Charles Dickens' 1850 novel The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger.
David Copperfield is a novel by Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to maturity. As such, it is typically categorized in the bildungsroman genre. It was published as a serial in 1849 and 1850 and then as a book in 1850.
Lee County is the westernmost county in the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 22,173. Its county seat is Jonesville.
Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. The novel is a Bildungsroman and depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman & Hall published the novel in three volumes.
A caul is a piece of membrane that can cover a newborn's head and face. Birth with a caul is rare, occurring in less than 1 in 80,000 births. The caul is harmless and is immediately removed by the attending parent, physician, or midwife upon birth of the child.
Barbara Ellen Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
The Poisonwood Bible (1998), by Barbara Kingsolver, is a best-selling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River.
David Copperfield is the protagonist after which the 1850 Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield was named. The character is widely thought to be based on Dickens himself, incorporating many elements of his own life.
David Copperfield is a two-part BBC television drama adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1850 novel of the same name, written by Adrian Hodges. The first part was shown on Christmas Day 1999 and the second part the following day.
Peggotty is the name of a character and family in Charles Dickens's 1850 novel David Copperfield.
Dora Spenlow is a character in the 1850 novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. She is beautiful but childish. David, who is employed by her father, the lawyer Mr Spenlow, falls in love with Dora at first sight and marries her. She proves unable to cope with the responsibilities of married life and is more interested in playing with her dog, Jip, than in keeping their house. All this has a profound effect on David, but he still loves her. A year into their marriage, she suffers a miscarriage; her health steadily declines until she dies.
The Lacuna is a 2009 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It is Kingsolver's sixth novel, and won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Library of Virginia Literary Award. It was shortlisted for the 2011 International Dublin Literary Award. Kingsolver won the 2010 Women's Prize for Fiction for the novel.
Mr. Dick, whose full name is Richard Babley, is a character in the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield and its many adaptions. His main role in the story is as a wise fool – amiable and innocent but also perceptive and effective.
Agnes Wickfield is a character of David Copperfield, the 1850 novel by Charles Dickens. She is a friend and confidante of David since his childhood and at the end of the novel, his second wife. In Dickens' language, she is the "real heroine" of the novel.
The Personal History of David Copperfield is a 2019 comedy-drama film written and directed by Armando Iannucci, based on the 1850 novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. It stars Dev Patel as the title character, along with Aneurin Barnard, Peter Capaldi, Morfydd Clark, Daisy May Cooper, Rosalind Eleazar, Hugh Laurie, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw and Paul Whitehouse.
Trust is a 2022 novel written by Hernan Diaz. The novel was published by Riverhead Books.