The poverty is almost unrelenting, and when Damon gets a break, it never quite feels real and secure. Some aspects are told before they would have been generally known, which must be to enlighten the reader.ĭEMON COPPERHEAD is a lengthy read, and can be gripping at times, but at other times covers topics that didn’t interest me, like American football. A few kind or strong characters surface for Damon: his neighbours the Peggotts, his schoolteachers, a community nurse, and his friend Tommy who manages to avoid tragedies and joins a local paper. Angry, too, that an opioid epidemic stormed through the community, making people desperate to buy painkilling drugs they had been told were harmless, knocking them out of circulation, work, and life. That women marry out of desperation, and are then derided and abused by husbands with inferiority complexes and selfish natures. Barbara Kingsolver comes across as angry that living conditions and social support were so dire. With strong language from the start, this is a distinctly adult book, also an angry one. At one point, he earned by sorting garbage, and he had no clothes but those he wore to work. I don’t see why Damon wouldn’t ask his case worker about the rent. This coming from a man who was charging the kid rent. McCobb, his wife, and his kids try to live on his get-rich-quick enterprises, with the famous line about earning more or earning less than your expenses. Later in the tale, the foster family of the McCobbs double for the Micawbers in Dickens. The Crickson tobacco farm is toxic in more than one way, taking in boys for a cheque and free labour, while underfeeding them. To begin, Damon helps his mom, but a desperate marriage later she takes a pill too many, and Damon, nicknamed Demon, is farmed out to fostering while she’s in rehab.
The Virginia mountains were bought by coal mines, and later in the story, red-haired Damon learns that the mine firms deliberately prevented other industries from opening, and saw that schools were underfunded to assure a steady supply of workers.
Damon is a kid for the nineties generation, living through what was to become a tragedy across an entire population.Ī boy called Damon is born in his mom’s trailer, his father absent, family seldom referred to, in southern Appalachia. DEMON COPPERHEAD is drawn from Charles Dickens’ work David Copperfield, and Dickens said that David was his favourite character, carrying much of himself. How disaster breaks families apart, and what conditions caused the problems. Barbara Kingsolver (who used to play the keyboard in a band with Stephen King, among other writers) is good at writing the nitty-gritty of tragedy. This strong, social-minded fiction won’t appeal to everyone. "A hard-hitting novel of the Appalachia experience" Demon Copperhead
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