I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of this title. Given my listening habits, it took me the better part of a year to make it through the 21 hours. Normally, if I take such long breaks from a book, that means I’m not going to finish it. Not the case with this one. Demon, the protagonist, had a way of fading away for a few weeks at a time but then he would bubble to the surface of m’brain and I’d feel the urge to check back in on his story.
Part of the reason it took me so long to get through this one was that I felt the middle 1/3 of the book slipped into a repetitive and depressing cycle of Demon — an Appalachian middle-schooler thrust into the foster system when his single mom OD’ed — having some horribly tragic event befall him, only for him to somehow cobble a life together and a path forward… until the next tragedy or piece of crappy luck struck. I remember thinking “Dang. How much bad luck can one kid endure?” but I guess resilience is a requirement of both the reader and the character.
Set largely in the heyday of Purdue Pharma’s and the Sackler family’s ravaging of Appalachian culture via bottles of hydrocodone, Demon Copperhead is the deep dive, 21 hour version of The Matt Mitchell Music Company’s song, Bootstrap Nation. Side note: while we’re on the topic, if anyone wants to subject themselves to a sickening and sobering peek behind the source of America’s opioid epidemic, check out Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain.
I’ll steer clear of spoilers here but I will say this about the way Kingsolver wrapped up the novel: it was worth the effort. Go grab yourself a copy and settle in for a swirling eddy of neglect, abuse, bad luck, and bad choices splashing against the occasional rocks of kindness, compassion, and connection.
ReMarkable 