Ron Charles's Reviews > Demon Copperhead

It’s barely Halloween. The ball won’t drop in Times Square for another two full months, and more good books will surely appear before the year ends. But I already know: My favorite novel of 2022 is Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead.”

Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love. Damon is the only child of a teenage alcoholic — “an expert at rehab” — in southwest Virginia. He becomes aware of his status early, around the same time he gets the nickname Demon. “I was a lowlife,” he says, “born in the mobile home, so that’s like the Eagle Scout of trailer trash.” The more he grasps the connotations of words like “hick” and “redneck,” the more discouraged he becomes. “This is what I would say if I could, to all the smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes. …We can actually hear you.”

Now, we can hear him.

“You get to a point of not giving a damn over people thinking you’re worthless,” he says. “Mainly by getting there first yourself.”

Demon is right about America’s condescending derision, but he’s wrong about his own worth. In a feat of literary alchemy, Kingsolver uses the fire of that boy’s spirit to illuminate — and singe — the darkest recesses of our country.

The essential Americanness of “Demon Copperhead” feels particularly ironic given that Kingsolver has drawn her inspiration directly from one of England’s most celebrated classics: “David Copperfield,” by Charles Dickens. In a brief afterword, Kingsolver expresses her gratitude to Dickens and acknowledges....

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