Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Demon Copperhead

In the acknowledgements, Barbara Kingsolver notes that the institutional poverty and societal problems that Charles Dickens reflects from his own time in David Copperfield are still among us today. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, too, with this and the many other Dickens adaptations frequenting theaters, bookshelves, and screens recently. Dickens lived in the mid-nineteenth century, a rich man who was once a poor child, and uniquely positioned to hold a mirror to the full breadth of British society through his fiction. He never forgot his early struggles in poverty and middle class, and David Copperfield, his most autobiographical novel, reflects that.

Kingsolver’s modern revival feels so much harsher than my rosy memories of Copperfield. Perhaps it’s easier to read about historical poverty from the comfortable distance of the present; there were so many moments in Copperfield where I thought, “Social Services wouldn’t allow a kid to be working in a factory or out on the street if this was set now.” Obviously, that’s a naive assumption coming from a person who’s never personally encountered the US foster system. Demon Copperhead is set during the opioid crisis in the Appalachian Mountains-region of Virginia, and it both celebrates its people and abundant natural wonders while
condemning the corporate coal exploitation of the land, economy, and population there. I’d never before considered the cruel way we joke about “hillbillies” without thought for the policies of both unsustainable extraction and criminally underfunded social services that have created the institutional poverty in that part of the US.

David Copperfield and Demon Copperhead are well matched companion reads (a feat since they’re both very long), even though it felt much harder to stomach the hardships in the latter. Kingsolver made a number of small and large changes to modernize the story, and some previously ‘good’ characters are quite different in her version. It makes me wonder if I would see them differently the next time I tackle Copperfield.

One issue I had with Copperhead was the prose: it’s written in the voice of the main character, who speaks rather roughly, almost crudely. It made sense for his voice, but it was not necessarily beautiful to the ear. David Copperfield is a soaring epic, the first Dickens book I read as an adult (besides A Christmas Carol, which doesn’t quite count) and fell in love with, and Demon Copperhead doesn’t quite capture that magic as it felt decidedly grimmer to me in many ways. It’s still quite good, though, and a worthwhile undertaking. Kingsolver is quite like Dickens in her unflagging concern for the state of our society and those we overlook.

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