Beautiful life story for modern times

Kingsolver has crafted a tale as heartwarming and lyrical as the story that inspired it yet filled with deep insight, realism and dark sadness at the damage inflicted by capitalism’s exploitations and society’s failures with looked after children. Yet through it all is laced love and hope.

5 people found this helpful

A full-on powerful re-working of Dickens

At 26hours of listening David Copperhead is massively long, rivalling the work which flows through it: Dickens’s David Copperfield (36 hours unabridged). I am not keen on today’s prequels and sequels and re-workings of classic works, but this is an exception. It could be read with no knowledge of David Copperfield, but a close familiarity with Dickens’s classic definitely deepens the interest of Kingsolver’s intertwined parallel novel with her arresting adaptations of Dickens’s cast of characters and moral messages.

I did find that the whole was over- long, however. From when Copperhead injured his knee playing football and became dependent on pain killing opioids (and subsequently many other drugs), the hours did begin to drag with an overload of addiction detail. (And what distressing detail she provides!) The very strong statement that Kingsolver is making about the dire and shameful condition of drug dependency, and of the neglect of impoverished people in America today would have been more effective if it had been hammered home less.

Dickens’s characters – the Peggottys, Mcawbers, little Emily, Agnes, Steerforth, Aunt Betsy and Mr Dick etc etc - are here and developed in new plausible and subtle ways, but the reinvention of Dora Spenlow (David Copperfield’s ‘child wife’) as a doomed drug addict was an extension of the drug scene which just didn’t work for me. Once Kingsolver entered the world of drug addiction with her characters, I found her polemic too insistent.

The whole of the story has been relocated to Appalachia and Charlie Thurston’s narration transports you wholesale into that part of America with its colloquial language of Copperhead’s narrative voice and all the dialogue . If that accent is not Thurston’s own, he did an amazing job of creating it for 26 hours!

2 people found this helpful

Terrific reworking of a classic

I've loved David Copperfield for decades. This updating is glorious - clever, heartbreaking and immediate, no longer with Victoria distance.

1 person found this helpful

A superb writer at her very best

Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favourite writers, this in my opinion this one is her best.
Raw, gritty and realistic it is a novel that gives voice to people who often go unheard and certainly made me question my own prejudices.

1 person found this helpful

Fabulous

This is my book of the Year. A superbly written and read book. Just wonderful.

1 person found this helpful

Amazing book...

Great story and performance ! Makes you think about your life and appreciate what you have more...

1 person found this helpful

Probably the best book I’ve ever listened to.

You’re in for a emotional ride. You are in this story with the characters. Truly a masterpiece.

Fantastic

Fantastic read! So well written and so captivating.
Really enjoyed it. A sad life of a magnificent boy.

Fantastic Read

Thought provoking, beautifully written, fascinating insights.
I would highly recommend this book, a rollercoaster .

Loved this!

Loved the characters, amazing story! Loved the links to David Copoerfield, but you’d enjoy this even if you haven’t read it. I won’t forget this one in a hurry!