Nov/Dec Book Club: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

For the next book club meeting, we will be discussing Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. One person was reading it already, and we decided it would be a good selection. As some of you know, I'll be busier next month with a new baby, and might not have a lot of time to read haha but either way I can try to come to the meeting at least too!

Diatribe seemed to work well last time, but if we want to go somewhere with more food, we can discuss other options too? We had a somewhat impromptu meeting with some of the regulars last week, and I hope to see more people next time!

The description of the book reads:

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this 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. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he 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.