Barbara Kingsolver is a SERIOUS writer (Pulitzer Prize winner), and her goal is to make you experience injustice viscerally. Demon Copperhead is a first-person narration of a young boy called Demon Copperhead, patterned after Charles Dickens's book David Copperfield. Kingsolver writes about a scrappy hero born into poverty in the Appalachian mountains at the cusp of the opioid crisis. His single, ex-drug addict mother tries her hardest to give him what she never had--stability and love--but is sucked back under, orphaning Demon at ten years old. He is at the tender mercy of the stressed foster care system in one of the poorest regions in the United States. As Demon grows up, he encounters a spectrum of people, from those who care for him to those who want to use him up. It is a brutal story of abuse, addiction, and exploitation set against the beautiful scenery of his beloved mountains. David Copperfield is easier to read because it happened long ago and far away. Demom Copperhead is fiction that is true for a child today. It gives the book gravitas.
Kingsolver uses her prodigious writing skills to humanize an unfairly despised and disadvantaged population. It is a well-told story, heartbreaking story. I wish it had been shorter. At times, I felt crushed by Demon's bleak circumstances and choices. I stopped midbook and read something else for relief. I'm glad I read it, and I doubt I'll ever reread it.
Here is a lovely, five-minute interview with Barabara Kingsolver talking about Demon Copperhead and Charles Dickens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TwYw0cjxlw
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I visited a fantastic independent bookstore in Severna Park, Maryland, called Park Books & LitCoLab. The knowledgeable and helpful employee recommended this mystery to me because I like Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (reviewed here: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Thursday+Murder+) and Robert Thorogood's Death Comes to Marlow (reviewed here: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Death+Comes+to+Marlow). I consume most of my books in audio format, but The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett needs to be read. It is hard to describe, but I will try. First of all, the entire story is told through transcribed audio files. It is a mystery about a little boy who discovers a book containing a code, causing something terrible to happen to his beloved teacher. Steven Smith is dyslexic and didn't learn to read well until he was an adult in prison. When he gets out, he is determined to solve the mystery of what happened to his teacher, Miss Isles. Or the book is about something else. You have to read it to see. You will like this one if you like clever, code-filled books (and I do).
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I have been a Cornia Funke fan since I read her Inkheart trilogy. Her books are translated from German into English, and they resonate with me because I lived in Germany for nine years of my life. The descriptions of the flora and fauna conjure up walking in the German countryside. Her characters are German folk art with fairies, trolls, and other fantastic creatures come to life. Dragon Rider isn't her best work; however, I enjoyed her character arcs and plot twists. They don't feel American to me, but European. It is an old-world quest and coming-of-age story.
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