I first read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens as a child, and it might be time for another reread to see how the story feels through adult eyes. A Tale of Two Cities remains one of my favorites—I’ve read it several times—and I keep a Dickens collection at home. So when I picked up Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s reimagining of Dickens’ classic, I knew I was in for something powerful. What I didn’t expect was just how much this book would squeeze my heart with every chapter.
Kingsolver brings Damon, a boy born to a teenage mother, vividly to life. The early chapters, focused on his childhood, were especially heavy—I often had to pause after a single chapter to take a breath. When your heart aches for a fictional character, you know the author has done something extraordinary.
Her writing is remarkable. I could smell the dumpster where Damon hides one night, dirty, hungry, and desperate. The characters she creates are unforgettable—you only have to read the chapter where U-Haul first appears to see her genius at work. It’s fitting that Damon is an artist himself, because through his eyes, people are described with such raw precision they leap off the page.
Having lived in a coastal city all my life, I found myself rooting for Damon to one day see the ocean. This is a book that touched my heart deeply and will linger in my mind for a long time to come.
Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
“The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.”
“This is what I would say if I could, to all smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes: We are right here in the stall. We can actually hear you.”
“The moral of his story was how you never know the size of hurt that’s in people’s hearts, or what they’re liable to do about it, given the chance.”
Anna Bushi 