Similarly to Dickens, Kingsolver depicts the condition of the poor, though, in her case, in the often-overlooked parts of the United States. Angus, in particular, possesses the same good-natured, mature character of her predecessor Agnes, while also casting off the Victorian angelicness in favor of a tough, no-nonsense type of personality. Characters like the sniveling, mawkish Uriah Heep and the scarfaced Rosa Dartle are reinvented in startlingly new ways while remaining reminiscent to their original characters. In this way, Kingsolver maintains the essential plot structure of Dickens’ original novel, as well as his cast of colorful characters, while also creating a story that is entirely different from the original source material. But whereas David becomes a gentleman in English society, Demon has to perpetually battle the cycles of addiction and poverty that afflict his family and community.
As with David in Dickens’ novel, Demon is orphaned at a young age, experiences neglect, child labor and substance abuse and eventually finds success and family. Kingsolver’s novel mirrors the original story of David Copperfield down to the minute details. It really does feel like a Dickens novel for our time, though in some respects much heavier, both because of its content and the reality that the issues addressed in Demon Copperhead not only remain, but have grown considerably worse since the ’90s. The book is a clever retelling of Charles Dickens’ classic novel David Copperfield, set in the Appalachian Mountains during the opioid epidemic of the late 1990s. During my race to complete my Goodreads book challenge for 2022, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s ( Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees) most recently published book, Demon Copperhead.
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