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    Demon Copperhead: A Novel
    Demon Copperhead: A Novel
    Demon Copperhead: A Novel
    Audiobook21 hours

    Demon Copperhead: A Novel

    Written by Barbara Kingsolver

    Narrated by Charlie Thurston

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

    A New York Times ""Ten Best Books of the Year"" • An Oprah’s Book Club Selection • An Instant New York Times Bestseller • An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller • A #1 Washington Post Bestseller 

    ""Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

    ""May be the best novel of [the year]. . . . Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love.” (Ron Charles, Washington Post)

    From the acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity

    Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

    Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 18, 2022
    ISBN9780063252004
    Demon Copperhead: A Novel
    Author

    Barbara Kingsolver

    Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in rural Kentucky. She earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. At various times she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently resides. Her books, in order of publication, are: The Bean Trees (1988), Homeland (1989), Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Another America (1992), Pigs in Heaven (1993), High Tide in Tucson (1995), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), Prodigal Summer (2000), Small Wonder (2002), Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands, with photographer Annie Griffiths (2002), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007), The Lacuna (2009), Flight Behavior (2012), Unsheltered (2018), How To Fly (In 10,000 Easy Lessons) (2020), Demon Copperhead (2022), and coauthored with Lily Kingsolver, Coyote's Wild Home (2023). She served as editor for Best American Short Stories 2001.  Kingsolver was named one the most important writers of the 20th Century by Writers Digest, and in 2023 won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Demon Copperhead. In 2000 she received the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have been adopted into the core curriculum in high schools and colleges throughout the nation. Critical acclaim for her work includes multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association, a James Beard award, two-time Oprah Book Club selection, and the national book award of South Africa, among others. She was awarded Britain's prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) for both Demon Copperhead and The Lacuna, making Kingsolver the first author in the history of the prize to win it twice. In 2011, Kingsolver was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has two daughters, Camille (born in 1987) and Lily (1996). She and her husband, Steven Hopp, live on a farm in southern Appalachia where they raise an extensive vegetable garden and Icelandic sheep. 

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    Reviews for Demon Copperhead

    4.5/5

    2,331 ratings152 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Humorous and heart breaking. The author one of the best story tellers and the voice actor was exceptional!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      If you have not read Demon Copperhead READ IT! This is the best book I have read in such a long time. It may be my favorite book I’ve ever read!

      A coming of age story of a boy born in Appalachia. He tells of his life with a single teenage mother battling addiction and bad men, foster care, his own addiction, the people around him that have similar battles and the ones that are always there for him. It is such a beautiful, gut wrenching story. Although fictional, Barbara Kingsolver definitely did her homework while writing this piece of absolute art. This story hits very close to home on many levels. I cannot recommend it enough!
      FIVE STARS⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      If the title of the book doesn't grab you, then Charlie Thurston's narration of it certainly will. Thurston has the accent and the calm matter of fact delivery of Demon's voice that reveals his quiet humor and his acceptance of the truths of his life and his struggle for survival. I've read other Kingsolver books, but this one is exceptional. While telling us about Demon's life, Kingsolver exposes the foster-care system, the anti-gay faction, the win at all costs sports community, and especially indicts the pharmaceutical companies and unethical doctors as the primary cause of the drug addiction rampant in Lee County. Paralleling the life of Demon with that of David Copperfield suggests that the present hasn't changed that much from the past.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The level of knowledge displayed in the narrative concerning the opiate crisis in rural America is spot on!!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Quite a journey. If you want a book to make you feel all the things by the end then this is one. Grief, anger, humor, angst, pity, victory, and defeat. One star off for the length and excessive use of curse words which in my opinion do not ad anything to the story at all. At first it seems as if this whole book is going to be one whole trainwreck of a novel but hang in there some redemption does occur by the end. This won't be everyone's cup of tea but for me it has local appeal.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Loving the book but the stream has some MAJOR gaps in it - apparently entire chapters, in which major events take place. Really ruined the experience and I had to stop midway.

      Somebody needs to do some serious quality control here. I wouldn’t bother starting until this gets fixed.

      Really ashame

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This is the best description of Appalachia I’ve ever heard. For better or worse, every character is either you or someone you know.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Wow! I live just a few hours from Lee County, work in the juvenile court system, been to juvenile detention centers and Beaumont (now closed). This writer is spot on with the battles fought by our older kids in “the system”. A real look from the kid’s perspective.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Slow start, it got better. I began to finally notice and appreciate the characters (like Copperfield) with UHaul= Uriah Heap. It's been almost 20 years since I read Dickens in college, but now I want to go back and re-read the original to see how they compare. Since this was an audiobook I didn't get a chance to read any afterward/acknowledgements. I'd love to meet with others and discuss this story.
    • 5/5
      It took me awhile to get into this , but Barbara Kingsolver is a favorite of mine, so I persisted. A compelling story, based on David Copperfield, told in first person in poetic language. Beautifully read, I highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      Astonishing tale of growing up and falling flat only to pick oneself up again and make good. So much detail such wonderfully crafted characters and a brilliant narration by Charlie Thurston who completely embodies Demon - a real tour de force
    • 5/5
      Loved the story, even if it was incredibly sad. Barbara Kingsolver has an awesome imagination which takes you right along with her on this journey.
      The narrator did an excellent job. Well worth the time to listen to this very rich book, all 60 plus chapters. I didn't want it to end!
    • 5/5
      God damn! Hope I write like this someday. Read it.
    • 5/5
      This book ripped out my heart. it is told from the perspective of an addict, and the writing is so spot on, so compelling that my son, a recovering addict, could not believe that the author was not herself personally familiar with addiction. It has found a place among my favorite reads and Barbara Kingsolver is my new favorite author.
    • 5/5
      What a great story. Really recommend this one. Don’t pass up.
    • 5/5
      She does it again. Just like the pun
      Bible m
    • 5/5
      As always the author is amazing at tracking all of her characters. This was a hard one to listen to. So much reality and hardship. Still an amazing book. Thank you again, Barbara K.
    • 5/5
      Honestly, too good to have been completely listened to as an audiobook. Rich with symbolism, beautiful prose, a well-paced storyline that allows for character development without dragging on. I think I would have appreciated it even more if I read a physical copy or e-book so I could annotate more.
    • 1/5
      While this book was well written, it was incredibly sad and disheartening with nothing good happening. It’s just blow after blow of stress and misery and I hated the entire thing. I hate a DNF or I would have given up way earlier on and now wish I would have.
    • 5/5
      This big, sprawling book/audiobook is absolute perfection. It’s one you just don’t want to end because you’re so attached to the characters. And the narrator, one of the best I’ve ever heard, fit the story perfectly. Can’t recommend this book highly enough.
    • 5/5
      From the first paragraph, I was drawn into the life of this child. It is a testament to the gift of writing beautifully that I am able to hang in and continue reading with all of this tragedy.
    • 5/5
      What a great story!! Such very much alive characters and language. And also an excellent reader. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Thank you!
    • 5/5
      Great story telling. Lots of language though. Parts are pretty hard to hear.
    • 5/5
      Great story- Appalachian resident here and I felt this story deeply.
    • 5/5
      As a former resident of North Georgia and frequent visitor to Kentucky during the same time set in this book, I could relate to a lot of the story which did not stray far from the truth. Great read with a bit of dry humor.
    • 5/5
      Kingsolver used beautiful prose while still maintaining the somewhat troubled grammar of her protagonist, and that's just the first miracle she performed. This book calls attention to important issues with no sacrifices to its plot or its characters' development journeys and manages to leave you crying, chuckling and grinning all at once. I wish I could read it for the first time again.
    • 5/5
      Like Holden Caulfield, Ishmael, and Hick Finn, Damon Fields, aka Demon Copperhead is one of those rare, truly memorable voices in Literature. Kingsolver in an intentional echo of Dickens, focuses on the generation of kids in Appalachia who fell victim to the corporate lie that opioids weren’t harmful. In doing so, she defends generations of people who have been the outcasts and butts of jokes and pawns of industry taking advantage of them for their resources. But Demon is no stereotype, but rather a resilient, proud young man who faces the horrible events of a world created by others with humor, determination, and a will to survive. Demon speaks well for the outcasts and those most choose not to see or worse blame them for the tragedy of growing up poor in America. Kingsolver created a voice that carries all of the Appalachian pride while never making him pitiable, or mocking a people so often the butt of jokes. The book deserves all the accolades it has received and will become a classic of adolescence caught up in a world that doesn’t care about them. Heartbreaking but ultimately triumphant, Kingsolver has done her heritage proud.
    • 5/5
      Gorgeously written and painfully human, the novel breaks the “up by your bootstraps” mold of the coming of age novel with the stark realism of life as it’s actually lived for so many kids in America. It’s also, perhaps accidentally, a brilliant and biting response to the hack JD Vance’s stereotypical attempt to capture the trials of an Appalachian youth’s life in fiction. An amazing piece of literature. Brava!
    • 5/5
      A story that will not soon leave me with characters that I will think about for a long time. Could not recommend enough! Expertly read by Charlie Thurston in a way that brought the characters to life.
    • 5/5
      Such a well written story that will forever be in my heart!