Nancy Lynner, AWC Central Scotland and Education Team member
A Short Report on a Long and Fabulous Book
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is the winner of the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (shared with Trust by Hernan Diaz).
The book is structured like Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and Kingsolver uses that book as inspiration-and-then-some for plot devices and characters in her book, Demon Copperhead. No, you don’t need to have read the Dickens book in order to enjoy this book. Those who have read both will have a deeper experience, and will get a few more laughs recalling/comparing priceless characters in the books. If you ever cry when you’re reading, well, that might happen, too.
Her book is set in rural Appalachia in the 1990s and follows the life of red-headed orphan Damon Fields. His red hair and fiery personality earn him the nickname which is the title of the book. Born into poverty, his teenage mother dies young, he has never known his father, and he is thrown from one bad circumstance into another, repeatedly falling through the cracks in society’s care network.
Kingsolver often includes social commentary and criticism in her works, and in this book the context is the opioid epidemic created by US pharmaceutical corporations. In Demon Copperhead it is a deadly tsunami engulfing individuals and families, and we swim through it as we read. You will not escape unscathed. Several characters’ opioid addiction begins as treatment for chronic pain.
Damon meets many people in his life and, like Dickens, the author creates variety, complexity, and idiosyncrasies in her cast of characters. There are plot twists and surprises. There are weddings, deaths, problems hidden, secrets revealed, successes, failures, friendship and love. The book runs to 800 pages, but I wish there were a few more. Damon is still young at the time the books ends.
The FAWCO Health Team has selected the non-fiction book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe about the Sackler family and their company’s marketing of pharmaceuticals and the opioid epidemic for the next Global Issues Book Club discussion (date to be announced). The FAWCO Education Team applauds their effort to draw attention to this issue, and we offer this book review to complement our members’ reading on this topic.
