Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead was so good, I had to keep putting it down. I wasn’t bored–it was because I was too invested. I fell hard for Demon in the first five pages, and that made it sometimes difficult to read the remaining 555 as she chronicled the harrowing details of his desperately unlucky existence. All the characters in the book are equally riveting; they’re all modern updates to the Dickens’s novel, but you don’t even need to know that to care about them.
The odds are stacked against Demon even before his alcoholic drug-using mom gives birth to him inside her rented trailer in an especially blighted corner of economically forgotten Appalachia. When his mom dies, he becomes a foster child/indentured servant, then falls into the hellhole of opioid addiction. Have I sold you on it yet?
Since he’s the narrator, you know from the start that he somehow survives, but you wouldn’t blame him for giving up. His life sucks, although no one he knows is living easy. I don’t think there’s a character in the book who isn’t grieving the loss of a loved one. Demon’s superpower is that he’s an artist–it’s what somehow keeps his spirit from extinguishing, and it’s literally the key to unlocking a future for himself.
I do love a book about drug addiction, and this one does not disappoint. I’m still haunted by how Demon first falls for his girlfriend’s bewitching dark eyes. Later, when he’s fully surrendered to their nihilistic codependency, he realizes her eyes are actually blue, but he’d only seen them hyper-dilated thanks to the fentanyl and oxy she constantly pumps through her system.
Drug addiction stories are usually about a damaged soul who succumbs to their self-loathing or goes too far into wanton excess. In this novel, drug addiction is like a famine in a war-torn country. It’s nearly impossible to avoid. This isn’t news to any of us, of course, and the way she depicts Demon’s reluctant slide into full addiction was one of the saddest parts of a book with lots and lots of sad parts. The systemic drug abuse where they live is extra enraging since we all know the story from the other side of the telescope, where the Sacklers lounge atop their mountains of cash.
Say what you will about the gimmickry of using a Charles Dickens novel as your story framework, it’s a pretty sad statement on our society that it’s so turnkey-easy to do. It’d be nice if 2023 America wasn’t so utterly … um… Dickensian and ripe for the fanfiction.
And lest you think it’s just a big saddo bummer to read, when I wasn’t taking breaks I was up until 2 am devouring every page. It’s a great story, the dialogue is funny, and I was rooting hard for Demon and his friends.
Marginalized and forgotten
I must now sheepishly admit that I've spent my life casually making jokes about Appalachia, rednecks, white trash, etc. To his credit, Jeff never let it slide, and always pointedly said it was uncool. But c'mon, who can resist a Cletus joke?1 Me, now. As Demon says in the book, “We can actually hear you.” I’m on their side now. The way our country negates and marginalizes groups of people isn’t an accident. It’s strategically executed by the powerful and we’re fools to take part. We’ve known this about minorities; The Simpsons’ Apu was rewritten after a public outcry. But who spoke up for Cletus? Kingsolver includes heroic histories about the people of the region, and clarifies how Appalachia has been repeatedly economically exploited and abandoned by the rest of the nation, the opioid disaster only the most recent example. She seduced me with an irresistible story then filled me up with mind-expanding knowledge. I’m grateful.
Womp womp
It was such a great book in fact, that I took a breather before I started another work of fiction. I didn’t do my little amuse-bouche trick with a mystery or a spy thriller. I wanted to just live with the characters a little longer. I liked to fall asleep imagining what June Peggot was up to, or how Angus and Demon were doing. Dorky I guess, but you have be a little nerdy to write a newsletter like this.
And when I did pick my next novel, what a mistake that turned out to be. I don't usually use this space to trash books2, but today I'm going to make an exception. Age of Vice is getting all kinds of buzz, and breathless reviews had all the words that trigger my Pavlovian ‘must read’ response: “moves as if on rails”, “cinematic,” “family saga.”
It’s being published simultaneously in 20 countries, and FX has bought the rights to make a TV series. I got swept up in the excitement. I mean, it’s the next pick for the Good Morning America book club–how could I resist?
I’m annoyed when I fall prey to these publishing marketing blitzes. Normally I hang back from the media hype, because I hate feeling like a sucker. But it happens. Leave the World Behind was another mistake for me. Everyone was hyperventilating about it, I rushed to read it and …
cue the sad trombone. A Children’s Bible tackles a similar concept without the clumsy racial themes and is infinitely superior.
So, Age of Vice. I downloaded it as an audiobook and I’m nearly done—more than 75% of the way through—but I honestly don’t care how it ends. Next. The cliché characters either live monastic lives devoted to service, or are so spoiled and corrupted by their extreme wealth and privilege they are cartoons of louche excess. The story itself seems to have railed a few too many lines of coke with the way it leapfrogs back and forth between characters and years and trots out brand new characters late in the novel. Last year, my friend dismissed Benedict Cumberbatch’s overpraised performance in Power of the Dog as “cigarette acting.” As soon as she made the joke I couldn't unsee the way he was overdoing it with the stupid smokes. In Age of Vice, the author is trying to do the same thing with liquor consumption–we can judge a character’s mental state by whether he gulps straight from the whiskey bottle or pours it into a glass. It’s all become comical to me, like a literary version of Al Pacino in Scarface.
I think my next read will be Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield, a sweet little book a friend of mine dropped off. It’s literally a little book–about 3 X 5 inches big with its own satin blue ribbon bookmark. And here’s the opening line:
“November 7th—Plant the indoor bulbs. Just as I am in the middle of them, Lady Boxe calls. I say, untruthfully, how nice to see her, and beg her to sit down while I just finish the bulbs.”
The snark! The strange gardening practices! The absolute lack of media marketing hype! This might be delightful. I’ll let you know either way. And if you feel like defending any of the books I just trashed, or trashing any of the books I just celebrated, let me know.
Until next time.
“Some folks will never eat a skunk but then again some folks’ll”... went down a YouTube rabbit hole about Cletus and it’s so wrong but dang those Simpsons guys can write.
I have no delusion that my little Substack newsletter could tank sales. I just feel like it’s much harder to write a novel than it is to write a takedown of a novel. This one just wasn’t for me.
oh thank you Peggy!! You're going to love this book.
I have been searching for a new novel to read, and The Pithy came just in time- thank you for this recommendation. And how you are able to capture in a sentence what it is that makes a novel worthwhile- "In this novel, drug addiction is like a famine in a war-torn country. It’s nearly impossible to avoid." I'm ordering the book now!