Everyone has been raving about Demon Copperhead, but I’ve had a more mixed reaction to it. This is because the novel is an update for Dickens’s David Copperfield, which is one of my favorite books.
In one way, this is a good match, because both Dickens and Kingsolver are political writers with social consciences. Dickens’s target was the effects of industrialization on poor children. Kingsolver’s in this novel is the effects on the people of Appalachia of what she sees as a war on agriculture.
Damon Fields, named Demon Copperhead because of his red hair, is a young Melungeon (I had to look it up) boy at the start of the novel. His father died before he was born, and his teenage mother has a very weak control of her sobriety. Residents of Lee County in Southwestern Virginia, they live in a single-wide mobile home owned by the Peggots next door. The kindly Peggots provide most of the stability in young Demon’s life.
Readers familiar with David Copperfield will be familiar with the plot, for it follows that book almost exactly. Although they are very poor, things are going fairly well and Demon’s mother has been sober for two years when she meets Stoner, soon to become Demon’s abusive stepfather. It goes mostly downhill from there, with Demon, after a brief career as a high school football hero, becoming addicted to oxy after an injury.
I couldn’t help noticing differences from Dickens, though. For one thing, the McCob family, Kingsolver’s equivalent of the Micawbers, are not the feckless, lovable, comic characters of Dickens, but a couple who, as Demon’s foster family, illegally send him to work instead of school, illegally charge him rent, and steal his money. (The Micawbers send David to work, too, but that assumed to be at the behest of his stepfather.) That leads to the biggest difference. Although Kingsolver can depict sympathetic characters, she doesn’t really do funny ones, Dickens’s gift. Further, the very young Demon at the beginning of the novel lacks the absolute innocence of young David that makes him so endearing. Demon’s narrative is too cynical.
Finally, Dickens is more willing than Kingsolver to let his story make his political points. Still, it’s a gripping novel with a serious message about the rural addiction problem, the lack of services for rural citizens, and the mistreatment of the poor. Although I read this novel before it made the list, Demon Copperhead is part of my James Tait Black project.
In which I take a break from my usual reviews and do a little musing.
But the Fossil girls aren’t the only orphans in children’s classics. Anne Shirley is an orphan, although admittedly Marilla and Matthew are a lot more present than many parents in children’s books. The parents of Mary Lennox of The Secret Garden and Rose of Eight Cousins die, and they go to live in the house of uncles they’ve never met. Mary’s uncle is a recluse and Rose’s uncle is away at sea. Hugo Cabret is left with his uncle, too, but his uncle disappears, and he lives alone in a clock tower. Pippi Longstocking’s father is lost at sea. David Copperfield is a posthumous child whose mother dies, leaving him to the mercies of a despotic stepfather. Poor little Oliver Twist never knew either of his parents. Pollyanna goes to live with her aunt, and Heidi with her grandfather. David Balfour is not only an orphan, but his kidnapping is arranged by his own uncle! Karana’s father is killed and then she misses the boat to wait for her brother. No one ever tells us what happened to Dorothy’s parents. She lives with her aunt and uncle but flies off from them in a tornado. And there’s the most famous orphan of all, Harry Potter, who at first lives in a cubbyhole under the stairs at his uncle’s house and later discards his relatives altogether. Somehow, none of these guardians seem to be as present as actual parents would be, we assume.
Then we have children who may as well be orphans. Wendy, John, and Michael Darling literally fly out the window with a sprite, so eager are they for adventure. Huckleberry Finn is a boy who would just as soon leave his father behind, and does. Although Marmee is home part of the time, she has to go off and nurse Mr. March for a good portion of the book, leaving Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy home alone. The boy in The Reluctant Dragon has a mother who wants him to come home, but he spends all his time hanging out with saints and dragons. Sara Crewe’s father leaves her at school and then disappears. Jim Hawkins runs off to sea to find treasure, leaving his mother behind to watch the tavern. Max from Where the Wild Things Are sails away to an island full of monsters. Cedric Errol’s mother gives her up to his grandfather so that he can have a better life. Meg Murray and her brother Charles Wallace travel off into time, although admittedly they are trying to rescue their father.
What? Me Read? 