I Read Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Demon Copperhead’.

One of my favorite journeys is that of the dejected.

Stories, fiction or otherwise, where individuals have been so ground down, mashed into the dirt, and still moved forward. Even when they’re not rising, they’re progressing. Hollowing forward through the wrecks, we find the protagonist sometimes on one side of Good, sometimes on the other, whatever it takes for our focus to move beyond it. Survival becomes the theme.

Demon Copperhead talks mainly about survival. And this comes in many forms, whether it be through abject poverty, through hunger, through escape, through a mercurial social rise, the titular main character is constantly scrounging together the will and resources to just barely make it by. And through almost all of these instances, it feels like the things that are happening in front of him are happening to him and he has no other concept of how to make it through to the other end, only knowing that there is a hunger there inside of him and that he has to find ways to suffer through that hunger to the next day. Then the next. Then the next.

This is written from the main character’s point of view, looking back on his life which throughout the book, I often forgot, has been quite short. I’m not sure that we even make it beyond Demon making it to 20 years old. This book is 540 some odd pages long, and throughout this adolescence, we experience a LOT of life alongside these characters. And they still remain so young despite all that they’ve seen. The language this is written in is beautiful in the way of a seasoned storyteller, someone with dark and humble beginnings but with an eye for observing the way that people act. Kingsolver is nearly a septuagenarian, but somehow manages to capture the foul and brash style of male youth near-perfectly. Though I think the tenderness in which he treats the women in his life is a bit advanced, I think there’s a sense of believability about it because of the fact that he was mostly raised by women throughout. Passages roll by rapidly here because they don’t rely on flourish and literary command, instead falling out of the mouth of a boy who is kind of calling it like he sees it. Every character we come across, young and old, male and female, all seem to have deeper intentions or motivations, but each of them are expressed through the eyes of a boy who cuts to the quick.

There are two massively larger pictures looming over this book, one of which I’ve read a great deal about, and one of which has mainly been buried though I’m sure I’ve reckoned with some element of it without even knowing.

The first of these is the awful state of foster care and the way that youth is sort of dragged by their collars into situations that they’re barely fit to handle, let alone thrive within. I know very little about the whole state of affairs here, but if it’s anywhere close to what this book illustrates, there’s a terrible reckoning coming. I just watched a movie this past holiday, The Nutcrackers, where a similar situation looms over the heads of a few brothers and it’s a very similar parallel. People who are ill-prepared to handle children are left holding the bag OR people who are willing to take advantage of the weak government system in place are waiting in the wings while the children become a source of income for a guardian who will hardly share their stipend. In watching the way that this effected this kid’s youth, it was a true wonder that he made his way into a situation that was able to handle him and that he was able to handle. For the sake of this story, it was incredible to see that this boy knew what was going on around him and had the wiles of a caged animal, knowing full well that maybe he didn’t know the best situation he was going to deal with, but he knew that certain things weren’t right. A lot of times, it was best to look at the bright side of things and understand that being in a shitty and dangerous situation might, somehow, be better than sleeping in a gas station bathroom. Sometimes.

The other huge looming threat that was discussed in this book is the opioid pandemic, likely discussed throughout the rest of the nation, but mainly the one that’s still broiling in Appalachia. I’ve watched so many documentaries and films about the way that these pills are eating the populations within these places alive and have even seen it first hand. The way that the second half of this book ties in the first half of this book within this theme is incredible and watching the way that the ripples of these pills effect not only the main character but the people directly around him and the county in which they live makes you want to continue zooming out and examining just how many little blips are affected by the pill mills of that time.

I loved reading this book! The little romances involved were appropriate and heartfelt, but didn’t cloud the overall portrait of the novel. Its ending made me both curious and relieved and happy in a sad way, but also I love that we didn’t get an overly detailed summary to wrap everything up. Life is hard. Surviving is an every day event, an every day effort. And for the book to sum up in the way that it did really did tell that exact thing.

I recommend reading this one! I think it does one of the very impressive things in literature in that it’s able to have beautiful passages which aren’t literary or too cerebral to untangle. A great read, great characters, a story I didn’t want to put down. Awesome first book of the year!