Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver

slow suicide's no way to go

"Wake up young man
It's time to wake up
Your love affair has got to go
For ten long years
For ten long years
The leaves to rake up
Slow suicide's no way to go
Oh

Blue clouded gray
You're not a crack up
Dizzy and weakened by the haze
Movin' onward
So an infection not a phase
Yeah oh

The cracks and lines
From where you gave up
They make an easy man to read
Oh oh, oh oh
For all the times
You let them bleed you
For a little peace from God you plead
And beg"

(Wake up - Mad Season)

The above lyrics are from that one song that hurt  me most - nothing has come close to it for years. Its a song the late Layne Staley sang with his band "Mad Season" ( which was a side project of his which featured Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, and has in its origin a rehab).  Why the song hurts is due it its pleading, self admonishing, self reprimanding, self imploring call to wake up, for "slow suicide is no way to go", ( which was the way Layne ultimately did go ). The last minute or song makes obvious the level of helplessness, and the self admonishing, and the cry for help - hmm.... Anyway, while opioid related deaths are not uncommon among superstars ( read as that of Prince), this song came to mind (if it ever goes away), due to the way that Dori wastes away and lives the last year or so, feeding the monster that eats her away. Demon speaks of the addiction thus, as he suffers and loves his girl the only way he could by feeding the parasite:

"It becomes your job, staving off the dope sickness for another day. Then it becomes your God. Nobody ever wanted to join that church. Then it becomes your God. Nobody ever wanted to join that church. A bad day is waking up with nothing, no God, no means. Lying in your stinking sheets, smelling what you hope is yourself and not your girlfriend. Someone has beat the tar out of you, it seems, and crushed some bones. Possibly a person, this comes with the lifestyle, but more likely it was the junk putting its fists through all your personal drywall on its way out of the building. Empty, you are a monster. The person you love is monstrous. You watch her eyes roll back in her head and her pretty legs racking, like the epileptic girl we all knew in grade school, Gola Ham. We were terrified of Gola. I tried to quit, more times than Dori did. Thinking I was the stronger of us. That was me being stupid, she just knew more." (1)

In that sense, I think this for me is a book that shows the daily hell that drugs make of your life, and BK has not left out a word to make the reader ache less.

The David Copperfield connection 

"I’m grateful to Charles Dickens for writing David Copperfield, his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society. Those problems are still with us. In adapting his novel to my own place and time, working for years with his outrage, inventiveness, and empathy at my elbow, I’ve come to think of him as my genius friend."

Above is an extract from the acknowledgement section of the book. By adapting his novel to BK's time ( the book is almost contemporary - 9/11 is mentioned, as well as Christine Aguilera, while MJ and Prince are referred to as classics from the 80s), she has captured a deep rooted problem of the USA. While David, despite all the hardships that he experienced managed to get his life in order comparatively unscathed, Demon had more organized corporations leaching the life blood of his generation - while the powers that be had largely looked away. BK also thanks Dr. Art Van Zee for "his groundbreaking exposure of dangerous prescription opioids, ultimately bringing the crisis to public attention." in the same acknowledgement.(2)

There are characters, matching mostly one to one with David Copperfield, of course adapted to suit the time and place of Demon's time frame. Hence if an interested reader, reads David Copperfield first, she may glean more from the comparison, than one who hasn't - I did with the help of an audiobook from the public domain ( incidentally my second reading of the novel) (3)

Hint of a conspiracy

There are hints of a long drawn out conspiracy against the 'land people' against the money earning people. Aunt June (a rare updated informed character in the book), hints of the conspiracy:

“it’s not natural for boys to lose their minds….It happens because they’ve had too many things taken away from them….No decent schooling….No chance to get good at anything that uses our talents. No future. They took all that away and supplied us with the tools for cooking our brains, hoping we’d kill each other before we figured out the real assholes are a thousand miles from here.”,

                                                      while Demon's best friend Tommy, the vociferous reader has this to say

"He claimed he was on the right track as far as the two kinds of economy people, land versus money. But not city people against us personally. It’s the ones in charge, like government or what have you. They were always on the side of the money-earning people, and down on the land people, due to various factors Tommy mentioned, monetize this, international banking that. The main one I could understand was that money-earning ones pay taxes. Whereas you can’t collect shit on what people grow and eat on the spot, or the work they swap with their neighbors. That’s like a percent of blood from a turnip."

Previously Tommy had been devastated by repeated insults to hill-billys and the like and their way of life. Together with Demon's upholding of country life, against that of life in the cities, one could argue that BK has put words into the mouths of her characters to share certain points of views. I can guess that some readers, especially from the United States arguing for and against these points of contention - myself in my ignorance will hold my peace.

A summarizing word

If David Copperfield could make your heart ache for some of the things that young David had to endure unfairly, then clearly Demon Copperhead is going to hurt more ( not necessarily because the latter is better - for I feel, if measured against its time David Copperfield is the more complete), for the cruelty is more, for society was far more knowledgeable in the 90s ( but then again quite less than today, with the internet yet to become a commodity). One specific incident is how Demon Copperhead gets all his money stolen right in front of a crowd and no one does a thing about it. Some of the characters, which were influenced from the older novel are right down cruel compared to the former ones (e.g. Fast Forward vs. Steerforth; McCobb vs. MicCawber). All in all it is a haunting novel, which shed light on a problem that we realized  less the gravity of. Maybe the social message had some small contribution for its recognition - having said that the book clearly has enough and more literature in it to fully qualify as a very good piece of contemporary fiction. Highly recommended for readers of contemporary fiction.

Rating: ****1/2
Pulitzer Award for fiction 2023
Women's prize for fiction 2023
Best 10 books of 2022 - The Washington Post ; The New York Times

 Photo Credits: https://www.litreadernotes.com

 

(1) This too reminded me of another Alice in Chains song, 'sludge factory' (which was about Demri, Layne fiance who predeceased him):

"You insult me in my home, you're forgiven this time
Things go well, your eyes dilate, you shake and I'm high
Look in my eyes deep and watch the clouds change with time
20 hours won't print my picture milk carton size
...

Now the body of one soul I adore wants to die
You have always told me you'd not live past 25
I say, stay long enough to repay all who caused strife"

(2)

“This region has been through a lot but the drug problem is the worst thing that’s ever happened in central Appalachia in terms of human cost and devastation to individuals and families. You’ve got all these families that came apart, children living with dysfunctional parents or went into foster care. Children who learned from their parents to take drugs from a young age. The devastation is going to go on for generations,”  

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/28/us-opioids-crisis-fentanyl-appalachia

(3)       David Copperfield : https://me-and-err.blogspot.com/2024/03/david-copperfield-charles-dickens.html