Barbara Kingsolver: “Demon Copperhead” – A joy to read

See all reviews

The boy with the victory cap

They were particularly hard hit by the epidemic, which in the US takes more lives than traffic accidents. It is from this region that the word Hillbilly originates, and for those old enough to remember the cartoon about the lazy and drunken housewife Snøfte Smith, he is the archetype of a mountain farmer from the area.

Both the opioid epidemic and the cartoon-archetypal prejudices against the hated peasant tribes from Appalachia are the subject of this book, which in its own way is a declaration of love to the people there.

It is also an educational novel about the Demon Copperhead. He has all the odds against him. Born in a caravan to a drug-addicted mother, who was barely conscious when he plopped out on the floor enveloped in his own fetal bag, or victory cap as it is popularly called.

The victory cap means that at least he won’t drown, like his father did a few months before Demon was born. The boy inherits his father’s dark skin, fiery red hair and green eyes. The father was a Melungeon: “These people were mixed, all possible colors plus Cherokee and in addition Portuguese, who were a separate thing once upon a time, not white”.

Up against Dickens

As the title suggests, the critically acclaimed and award-winning American author Barbara Ringvolver has compared plot, name and characters closely to Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield” (1850).

Demon, like David, gets a sadistic stepfather who gives him yellow and blue. He is put away, and his childhood becomes a hellish journey through America’s deplorable child protection and foster homes:

“We got food, but never quite enough, and were never quite done with the work either, or quite warm on our feet,” he writes about the stay on a dilapidated pig pen of a tobacco farm.

He then lives in the laundry room of a family who embezzle his money, and put him to work in a rubbish dump where they manufacture meth: Hungry, smelly and dogged at school, where they give him names like Bæsjehue, Taper, Søppel and Rævtryne.

An abundance

The book’s completely energetic and authentic style – superbly taken care of by the translator Kirsti Vogt – makes the book a joy to read.

Equally generous is the abundance of the most wondrous characters this well-deserved Pulizer Prize-winning novel offers. There is the always optimistic and good foster boy Tommy, the beautiful and confident childhood sweetheart Emmy and the eccentric Agnes. It is Demon’s manly grandmother who, like David Copperfield’s great-aunt, detests men.

It is the good Peggot couple, who take care of children, grandchildren and Demon, where everyone eventually falls victim to violence, drugs, sly doctors and dangerous langurs. And there is the deadly charmer and star quarterback Fast Forward.

First and foremost, there is Demon with the victory cap. He protects it from the hell that his childhood, youth and early adulthood offers. He is gifted at school and a prodigy on the football field, but jokes about it all the time to himself.

In certain places, the book does get chatty, but my goodness, what a joy it is to read this genuinely shocking novel.