Great Reads for Great Readers

 

Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver.

 

            Demon Copperhead is the nickname of narrator Damon Fields, child of a young man who died before Damon’s’ birth, and a girl who was too young for motherhood and entirely without family of any kind to support her.  Alcohol became her crutch.  He also has the misfortune to be born in Appalachia, ‘hill-billy’ country, one of the poorest, most exploited parts of the States bordering the Mason-Dixon Line, where Mining is the only work on offer and those offering it have complete power – over everyone.  In short, the Great American Dream is a nightmare for the ordinary folk Damon grows up with.

            But!  He is best friends with Maggot, his name for Matthew Peggot, who lives next door, and Maggot’s family has taken him to their hearts, which is just as well for, though she loves him, Damon’s mum cannot be relied on, especially when she goes on a bender;  then the boot is usually on the other foot:  Damon becomes, of necessity, a care-giver from a very early age.  Which is not to say that he’s any more deprived than any other of his schoolmates;  everyone puddles along, various parents in rehab of some kind, depending on their addictions – until twin tragedies occur:  opioids in the shape of oxycodone and fentanyl make their first appearances, and Damon’s mum meets her fate in the shape of Stoner, a fast guy with a motorcycle, a steady, well-paying job – and a loathing for Damon. 

            It is patently clear that this is not a marriage made in heaven.  In short order Damon is made an orphan and  abandoned to the inept local welfare system where he is subjected to the whims and vagaries of people who have applied to foster him, but only want the monthly allowance the State pays them to ‘look after’ him.  At the age of ten, he has become just a number, living in squalor and worked into the ground at one place, and barely fed in another.  This part of Damon’s narrative is purposely reminiscent of Dickens’s David Copperfield, for Ms Kingsolver wants it known that not a lot has changed between modern-day Appalachia and British Victorian times, just the anaesthesia that people use (including, eventually, Damon) to block out heart-ache, sadness and hunger for increasingly shorter periods.

            Ms Kingsolver was born, raised and lives in Appalachia, and there is no writer more uniquely and superbly qualified to write Damon’s powerful story, which is both a tribute to the country’s beauty and an elegy to its cruel mismanagement.  In God We Trust means nothing where Money is the only God.  Having said that, let us thank whatever deity gave us the pleasure of Ms Kingsolver’s singular literary voice:  how lucky we are to hear it.  SIX STARS.