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Demon Copperhead cover art

Demon Copperhead

By: Barbara Kingsolver
Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
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Summary

Demon Copperhead is a once-in-a-generation novel that breaks and mends your heart in the way only the best fiction can.

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE FOR FICTION

THE MULTI-MILLION COPY SELLING AUTHOR

BOOK AT BEDTIME ON BBC RADIO 4

AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK

Demon’s story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking ‘like a little blue prizefighter.’ For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.

In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty and addiction aren’t ideas. They’re as natural as the grass grows. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he’s willing to travel to try and get there.

Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between.

©2022 Faber & Faber (P)2022 Faber & Faber

Critic reviews

‘Daring, entertaining and highly readable’ The Times

'It's EPIC. Righteously angry, DEEPLY moving and exquisitely written.' Marian Keyes   

‘Emotionally raw and riotously entertaining’ Spectator

What listeners say about Demon Copperhead

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

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!

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20 people found this helpful

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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.

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15 people found this helpful

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Wonderful

Not being the brightest in the bunch (or at least, forgetting my long ago Eng Lit lessons) it took me a loooooong while to work out the Dickens connection. But even without that, this was an excellent, epic tale of disaster, hope, hopelessness and triumph. I love Kingsolver’s writing, and the narration was excellent too, bringing the huge cast to life. A splendid book.

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10 people found this helpful

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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.

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8 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Well done but heavy going

You need to be in a good place to cope with this. The Oxy subject being so relevant.
Lots of detail, all brilliantly done but just too much for me.

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6 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Not for me !

I could not get into either the Dickens association or the performance , though erring and narration both good, just not for me .

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6 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Long winded

Long winded life story, could have been shorter. Sad and hard to read in parts.

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5 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Not my cup of tea

This book is WAY too long and I must admit I found it very depressing. I did stick with it too the end but can’t say I enjoyed it. I also found the narration quite difficult to follow and had to really concentrate.

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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.

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5 people found this helpful

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Brilliant

Amazing vivid writing that has you gripped from beginning to end. I loved it. One of her best.

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4 people found this helpful