Category: Reviews by Patricia Prijatel

Demon Copperhead is about six when we first meet him, as he and his cousin Maggot ramble happily around the mountains and streams of rural Appalachia, contented residents of Lee County, Virginia, a community that is both solace and trap. Demon lives in a trailer with his mother; Maggot lives next door with his grandparents. The book follows Demon for the next 15 years as he becomes an orphan, tobacco picker, foster child, football star, drug addict, husband, widower, friend, lover, grandson, cartoonist, and nascent graphic novel author. It’s a life mirrored after Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, but with foster homes in place of orphanages, oxycontin instead of gin. Poverty, powerlessness, and child exploitation are much the same.

Our group had varied responses to the novel. At 548 pages of intense prose and chaos, it is daunting. Some found it mesmerizing and were sucked into the story, eager to keep reading to see how Demon approached his next trauma. Others needed to regularly take a breather, not wanting to face another bad decision and more destruction of Demon’s brittle life.

The book’s voice is its biggest strength. Demon narrates with the angst of a child, the naivete of a teen, and the hope of a young adult. He shares humor, pain, wisdom, and cluelessness in what is essentially a journal in which he is trying to figure himself out.  Kingsolver nails it, showing us how a life of deprivation and degradation can lead to what more privileged people consider poor choices; for those in the middle of the storm, they simply feel like the best of multiple bad options. As the story builds and Demon’s life destructs, we begin to understand why he is how he is, why he does what he does, and how he ultimately becomes who he is. His voice is full of heart, but it is also heartbreaking.

The book won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

This is the seventh Kingsolver book we have read as a group, and we have watched as she has grown as a writer, starting with The Bean Trees, published in 1988. Most of her books contain themes of social justice and environmental stress. The villains in Demon Copperhead are the mining companies that degraded the land, extracting what they wanted and leaving the residents to live with their mess; the drug companies that knew how addictive pills like oxy were, but pushed them anyway; a frayed social network that has no place for kids in poverty; and a healthcare system that doesn’t reach rural America.

Lee County is its own social ecosystem in which you can’t hide from your past. Old acquaintances pop up in Demon’s life, some for the better, others for the worse.  The Peggots are always somewhere in the background, showing Demon how home looks.  Aunt June leaves the Doom Castle (her apartment in Knoxville) to practice medicine “back home,” and helps Demon find the care, and cure, he needs. Fast Forward, the football star who first introduced Demon to drugs, returns and causes one of the book’s most traumatic events. Emmy follows Demon on a downhill spiral. Tommy, the lost foster kid who seemed destined for a dead-end life, helps Demon discover his future. Mr. Armstrong and Miss Annie never waver in their support of Demon. And, of course, Angus is Demon’s truth.

For Demon, Lee County is home. He cannot envision living anywhere else, especially in a city apartment where people don’t even have lawns, let alone woods and mountains. His people may be a mess, but they are his. He loves them and learns that they love him too. Throughout the novel, he strives to belong and, finally, at the end he does. And we assume he will finally see the ocean—because Angus is in charge.

— Pat Prijatel

This is not your average memoir. With stark self-awareness and insight, novelist Maggie O’Farrell throws us into the middle of her life through 17 essays about life-threatening and often harrowing events that define how she became who she is. She lightly weaves her biography throughout, giving us enough of a glimpse of her personal trajectory to understand as much as we need to know about how she got from point A to point B and why. But the book is primarily a sensory exploration of how it feels to be Maggie O’Farrell.

Much of what happens in O’Farrell’s life stems from a case of encephalitis when she was eight, the effects of which she shows throughout the book. But she waits until the penultimate chapter to explain the disease, trusting her reader to stay with her. She shows before she tells. It’s risky, but it works.

Because of encephalitis, her brain can’t accurately place her in her environment, so she often fights for physical balance, her muscles cannot provide enough strength for childbirth, she can stutter at book readings, and simply walking up to the stage at an event is a feat in itself.  

Her life sometimes defies belief, and she seems to take questionable risks, but she says being so ill so young changed her and made her embrace life with a passion few possess:

I am desperate for change, endlessly seeking novelty, wherever I can find it. When you’re a child, no one tells you that you are going to die. You have to work it out for yourself.

She has survived assaults that could have killed her—one of her attackers murdered another young woman shortly after he put his camera strap menacingly around O’Farrell’s throat. O’Farrell outwitted him by doing what she does with remarkable power: using her words.

Other brushes with death include three near-drownings, two more assaults, a child with deadly allergies, and multiple “missed miscarriages” in which the baby dies, but the mother has no symptoms of the loss. All this both forms and is a result of a personality that embraces risk, requires change, and is deeply introspective. In a relatively short book, O’Farrell shows how she was molded into a woman, a mother, and a writer of courage and intensity.

— Pat Prijatel

We first meet Katey at an art exhibit in 1966. It’s a show of photographs by Walker Evans from 1938 — portraits of New Yorkers riding the subway, a mix of that city’s rich, poor, well dressed, haggard, harried, hurried. Katey is there with her husband, Val. We know she has done well for herself because an aspiring novelist is also at the opening with his agent. When the agent sees Katey, his eyes light up, and he motions for her to come over. She nods politely and starts walking—and she and Val go right out the door.

That little scene tells us much of what we ultimately get to know about Katey—driven to inevitable success, living her life on her own terms, with no patience for anybody trying to take advantage of her.

At the exhibit, she notices photographs of an old friend, Tinker, and shows them to Val. In one photograph, Tinker is well dressed, looking like the affluent young banker she knew. In another he’s in threadbare clothes, even a bit dirty, but most important, happy. Katey tells Val she knew Tinker but the two don’t talk very much about it. Val can sense that there is more to the story, but he knows his wife, and doesn’t push. He thinks the scruffy photograph came first, but Katey clarifies that Tinker’s looks changed for the worse as the year went by. 

The rest of the book goes back to 1938 and tells us that story. Towles evokes images of pre-war New York that feel like old black-and-white movies—the light, the sounds, the energy of that city. It’s an especially vivid portrait, as seen primarily through the eyes of  Katey, 24 at the time; her friend, Evie; and of course Tinker. Nobody is who we think they are. They may not even be who they think they are.

Even though Katey is the narrator, this is Tinker’s story. As Katey’s trajectory points toward success, Tinker’s takes a turn away from glamour and toward a more honest, connected life. Judging by the photographs, a happier life.

The novel takes place almost entirely in 1938 with these young vibrant New Yorkers drinking remarkable amounts of alcohol and having witty Spencer-Tracy- Katharine-Hepburn-type conversations as they wander to speakeasies, bars, and fancy homes. We learn the least about Katey. As the narrator, she can tell us as much or as little as she wants. We get a sense of who she is professionally, but not a clear understanding of her personal background.  

The novel is a delight to read, even though at times you might challenge some of its assumptions. The images and the characters, including New York itself, will stay with you long after you finish the book.

To add authenticity, Towles uses photos from Evans’ exhibit throughout the book.

The book takes its title from George Washington’s Rules of Civility, 110 pieces of advice the future president wrote when he was 14. Tinker uses them to try to fit into a society to which he feels he does not belong. The last rule may say the most about his life choices as the year progresses:

Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire Called Conscience.

— Pat Prijatel