Off the shelf #2: Demon Copperhead
Thoughts on Barbara Kingsolver's much-discussed, lavishly garlanded novel
Last week, I mentioned that I finally knuckled down and read Demon Copperhead on holiday.
I also confessed to having avoided it. I find stories in which children are maltreated traumatic. When I read Hamnet, I crept into my son’s room and sat by his bed, holding his little hand as he slept, absolutely wracked with silent sobs. I think I might have an overactive empathy chip.
I’m in good company here, btw. Maggie O’Farrell had always wanted to write the story of Hamnet, Shakespeare’s son, who died when he was just 11, but had to wait until her own son was beyond his 11th birthday. And even then, she retired to the writing shed in her garden to compose the chapters where Hamnet dies, and his mother, Agnes prepares his body for burial. Genuinely some of the most harrowing fiction I have ever encountered. Little wonder Maggie couldn’t bring herself to write it in the house she share with her family.
Anyway, onwards. To Demon.
Kingsolver could paper her cloakroom walls with the fulsome reviews and laurels with which her novel has been garlanded (the Pulitzer, the Women’s Prize). Coming to a book after it’s been raved about is a double-edged sword. In theory, it ought to be reassuring; in practice, your expectations can be so sky-high you think, ‘Is that it?’ and metaphorically turn the book upside down and shake it, lest wonders I might have missed fall from its pages. (I’ve done this twice recently. One book I felt ‘meh’ about, the other I actively disliked, but I appeared to be a minority, so stayed schtum.)
So what did I make of this one?