Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

28 reviews

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

If it gives any indication of this book's quality, I read almost exactly half of this book in one day, a feat I haven't accomplished for any book this size in years. The second half took me a lot longer to get through because it's a lot heavier, but it's just as good. I can't even begin to describe how many iconic quotes are in this book. I couldn't recommend this enough to anyone who loves literary fiction, smalltown America, and a witty as hell protagonist.

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slow-paced
Loveable characters: No

This book dragged on and on endlessly. Lot of filler that doesn’t add to the storyline .  The POV when main char was 8 yrs was not believable. Felt like homework to finish this book. 

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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dark emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

an very intriguing story! felt like a glimpse into a fully different culture and region of the united states that i’m not familiar with. ups and downs for sure. 

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challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This is a 3.5 star read for me. I was disappointed that I did not fall under the "best read of the year" or "a 5 star read". I honestly don't get what all the hype is about.

*****SPOILERS at this point


This book is way longer than it needs to be. So much of Damon's story could have been condensed. It felt like we were reading (I listened to) every day of every week for the few years of his life. It was like reading his daily diary.
I was happy that Damon found a way through all that he was living but there was nothing happy in this story. I understand that life was no picnic for the rural areas of mining country but surely there was something to be happy about? Additionally, this story made every character sound ignorant of any the perils of opioids. 

The story is very predictable... of course a small-town boy that is in the crappy foster system finally finds a good place to stay and then a sport he is suddenly good at and becomes a temporary star because he blows out his knee and gets addicted to drugs and goes downhill from there, but in the end he magically is reformed and finally gets to see the only thing on his bucket list... the ocean (eye roll).

This is my first book from this author but I don't think there will be others. It just was not there for me.

I can definitely give 4 stars to the narrator Charlie Thurston. Excellent job at telling this story. Only thing is you need to practice on the female voices. (shrug)

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

omged. the writting style was beautiful. the story was so goddamn depressing but so important, informative and entrapping. im both relieved it ended where it did and wanting more. but this was an amazing book. i love how she writes, very witty and odd and random and disturbing and messy and unstable but absolutely perfect for the plot. 
take away .25ths cause it was really upsetting and disturbing, but that still matters, just not my favourite thing, personally. 
please check all trigger/content warnings to be prepared :):). 

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I struggle a bit with rating Demon Copperhead, and I settled with a 3.5-star rating for now. The story was generally interesting, just like the characters, but it was a bit too cliché and there was too much misery for my taste. I think the average rating here on Goodreads is way too high though. 

The struggle centres around Demon who’s born in an trailer park in the Appalachians to a drug-addicted single mom. The whole setting is really American which is maybe why I couldn’t relate to much happening as a European. The depiction of the foster system was quite interesting, and I learned a lot from it. It’s so sad how Demon has no place to stay, especially after the really predictable
death of his mother
. Still, these parts of the story were written well, and there are some sections in this novel that really make you think. Socio-political themes are a subject as well but I wished that they would’ve been thematized more. It was just your stereotypical “the city lefts don’t care for the poor people!” which I’m always irritated by since it’s just not true. 

I think my main problem with Demon Copperhead is its length. I honestly think that the book could’ve ended after the half: There’s a lot of misery, and everything goes wrong until there’s finally a glimpse of light, even though you’re wondering how long it’ll last. In my opinion, this was the best part of the book. But then, the really cliché addiction storyline starts with the introduction of one of the flattest characters in the book aka Dori. It annoyed me how much Demon was focussed on her since she was such a bad influence; it was no surprise that
she died as well
. The ending feels bittersweet and melancholic but the fact that Demon’s stepsister
is apparently in love with him
left me with an irritated feeling. 

Besides this, I also feel torn about the writing style. There’s a lot of telling and things that are described are written vulgarly and grotesque. There’s also a lot of ableism, homophobia, and sexism, but this is just the way Demon grew up, I suppose. I also don’t know if it’s just in the German translation but the slurs were a bit too much in my opinion. Furthermore, I struggled with the depiction of abuse. I don’t really know how to say it, but for me it was written too carelessly, if it makes sense. It felt more like shock value to me. 

I don’t really have much to say about the characters as well. There were too many and I couldn’t remember  all the names. Some characters were really great, like Tommy, Angus, or Mr Dick (even though we only see him a few times. Compared to this, Dori was quite the flat character, and Demon behaved so cliché at some points as well, like this cliché “oh, the city is so crowded, me, the countryside child, could never live here!”. 

So, I’m not sure whether I would recommend <Demon Copperhead. It won the Pulitzer Prize, so people who like to read those kind of books will enjoy it. For me, it was too negative and also just too long. 

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