A review by wardenred
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

challenging slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

At the time, I thought my life couldn’t get any worse. Here’s some advice: Don’t ever think that.

I'll admit it, this was a difficult book for me to read, and it's also a difficult one to review—not least because I feel that the things about it that made me struggle might be other readers' jam. For instance, the way it's written made me feel like I was reading a memoir rather than a fictional novel, except it was a memoir of a fictional person, and something about this discrepancy constantly pulled me out of the story. I do feel that for many other people, this style on the contrary can make the book more immersive. I also felt that some sections were really overwritten and could be made more impactful by tightening them up. But I'm also not sure if that's genuinely true, or if it's just my preference to more genre prose speaking. 

I did learn a lot of new things from this book—about life in the Appalachians and about the opioid crisis. I related to a lot of the commentary about class and how rural people are looked down upon. Plenty of moments made me emotional in different ways, and I enjoyed the balance of utterly heartbreaking parts and the more hopeful ones, as well as the injections of dry humor in both. The depiction of poverty here is among the most powerful I've ever read. The book is really voicey, too, with a strong recognizable style, and that's definitely a strength—it's just that for me, personally, that voice was a miss for some reason. 
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