Demon Copperhead

"This Dickensian tale of poverty and resilience in Appalachia fits Oprah Winfrey's interest in character-driven narratives that explore social issues and personal triumph. It aligns with her Book Club's history of spotlighting impactful contemporary fiction."

"Winner"

"The Women’s Prize for Fiction is, in my opinion, brilliant at highlighting those books that sit nicely in that intersection in the literary fiction/popular fiction Venn diagram—that is, the sort of book I’m looking for when I’m looking for an enjoyable and well-written book to lose myself in during a long journey, or while on holiday. This year’s winner was Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead , a modern retelling of David Copperfield set in an opioid-ravaged Appalachia, which has been a huge hit this year. Kingsolver previously won the same prize in 2010 with The Lacuna . Other shortlistees included Maggie O’Farrell’s historical novel The Marriage Portrait and Louise Kennedy’s tale of infidelity during the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ , Trespasses . The shortlists for the inaugural Nero Book Awards were announced in November 2023. These prizes might loosely be considered a replacement for the Costa Awards (formerly known as the Whitbread Awards), which were scrapped rather unexpectedly last year after five decades. The top book in each category will take home £5,000, and the overall winner a further £30,000. They won’t be announced until January, but notable finalists include Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting , a comedic family drama that was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Eleanor Catton’s environmental thriller Birnam Wood . And finally: the 2023 winner of the International Dublin Literary Award, a €100,000 annual prize, was German author Katja Oskamp and her translator Jo Heinrich for Marzahn, Mon Amour , a novel described by the Lord Mayor of Dublin as a “warm, witty, and moving portrait of older residents in Berlin.” Kingsolver’s beloved Demon Copperhead also triumphed in May when it shared the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction with Hernan Diaz’s bestselling novel Trust , a cunning book built of four unreliable narratives set in early 20th-century Wall Street. He has explained: The novel is about who has a voice: who, throughout history, has been given a megaphone. Who has been gagged? Rather than thematise that in an expository way, I thought it would be more vivid – and fun – for readers to be presented with this polyphonic arrangement of four voices in succession and gently ask them to question why we trust one over the other. An adaptation for HBO, produced by Kate Winslet , is forthcoming."

"You know, if we are going to argue about whether it is a historical novel, I’d point out it is set in the 1990s, although admittedly it does trail into the near-present. So, yes, it is the least historical of these novels set in the American South. But the culture and the tension are still all rooted in the past. It was criticised as being poverty porn, but I don’t really see that. It does risk being wildly sentimental, but I kind of like that. It’s old school. It has a confident, Dickensian snap and brio, a broad, swinging-for-the-fences ambition, and it worked for me. And the ending is the complete clichéd happy ending. Yet, because it’s such an enormous book, when you get there you feel like you’ve earned the big sentimental pay-off. I really liked it. It had me welling up. I think you’re right. People became too sophisticated—and once you start seeing the wires of something, the mechanism, then you feel like you’re being played. But surely the holy grail of all literature, all art, is to tackle these big emotions, to treat them honestly, with the kind of vastness they deserve. If you can do that, then surely that’s the pinnacle? I think that Demon Copperhead does. I’m aware that a lot of people, much more sophisticated than me, would furiously disagree. And maybe I have been played, but it worked for me. I loved it."

"I would. With the Barbara Kingsolver , people might say it’s a bit of a stretch, but the best novels that talk about crime are hybrids. She would say herself she’s writing about social justice. The Poisonwood Bible is about social justice. Demon Copperhead has been called the Appalachian David Copperfield . It reminds me of Shuggie Bain , actually, with a little of Huck Finn. And Odysseus, because this character goes on these odysseys and keeps meeting interesting people. I’ve been to parts of Appalachia; I do a lot of library outreach. It’s dirt-poor. If you were transported there from New York or Atlanta, you would think you were in some sort of alternate universe, because the poverty is so extreme. The neglect, the drugs, and the opioid crisis—all of those are crimes. The kid in Demon Copperhead is in such a horrible situation that he’s taken away from his family. It’s similar to what I was talking about with Sara. It’s his attitude that makes it so engaging. The book is dark, but it’s not overwhelmingly dark and horrible because he has such a great sense of humor. That’s why I mentioned Huck Finn, because that’s the Huck Finn way (not to mention that he ends up on a raft on the river). It really is that quintessential American story of ‘I’m not going to feel sorry for myself; I’m going to make fun of this.’ It’s a very Southern thing. When I’m in England, people say, ‘You’ve got a very English sense of humor.’ I always laugh and say, ‘Where do you think we came from? Georgia?’ The kid’s attitude is: ‘Yeah, no socks, no clothes, I haven’t eaten in 24 hours, but that’s just today. I’m just going to keep going.’ He’s like this wayfaring orphan who has no control over anything. He is also Melungeon, which is a mix of African American indentured or freed enslaved people, European, and Native American. It’s as if Huck Finn was mixed race, which is really an interesting way to approach it. England has its class systems, and we have our ethnic systems (though let’s be honest, England also has its ethnic systems). If anyone ever asks me, ‘What’s going on with America? Why did this happen?’ It’s either going to be racism or money. My grandmother also had a lot of animosity toward redheads. He’s a redhead—that’s where ‘Copperhead’ comes from. As I was reading it, I remembered how when she saw a redhead she would spit on her fingers and say ‘he’s from the devil’—particularly a left-handed redhead person. She would have been terrified in Scotland. The part of the story that I really related to on a personal level is that he likes to draw. He draws all these superheroes vanquishing villains, and it’s a metaphor for him overcoming people and destroying villains in his life. I remember doing that as a kid with my writing. I would think, ‘My sisters are such assholes, I’m going to write a story where they’re being mutilated.’ That kind of thing. I really related to that aspect of his character. The wonderful thing about America and the terrible thing about America is that it’s all different kinds of countries all in one. You probably know about Hillbilly Elegy . Everybody loved it when it came out but my take on it was, ‘Jesus Christ! Your ancestors—some of them almost died getting here. The mill closed down, and now you’re just giving up? If they could see you now!’ The way Americans hold onto Ireland. More Americans identify as Irish than people born in Ireland. It’s this romanticization of what was a really hard time. We tend to do that. These communities have been devastated by opioids, and that’s where the money comes in. It’s always going to boil down to money or racism. That’s why I love this novel. It moves very quickly. I always think what makes a mystery or thriller is the pacing, that’s what gives it that thrilling bent. It made me think about Cold Mountain because that’s a sort of odyssey as well, he meets all these wayfaring strangers. But, after a while, you think, ‘Who else is he going to meet now? This needs a car chase.’"

"A daring reimagining of the David Copperfield story, transposed to an opioid-ravaged Appalachia, from the author of The Poisonwood Bible and Flight Behaviour . It is, declares Elizabeth Lowry in The Guardian, a “ferocious critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children” and the book Kingsolver “was born to write.” Damon Fields, nicknamed ‘Demon,’ was born to a drug-addicted young mother in a Virginia trailer park, then orphaned and passed from home to home. The Dickensian plot transfers remarkably well to contemporary America—worryingly so—and Kingsolver’s Demon speaks with a verve and intensity that is difficult to put down. Demon Copperhead has found both critical and commercial success, having won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and been selected for Oprah’s Book Club."