“Kingsolver’s new novel is her best in years…The character of Damon is right up there with the best classic orphans of literatre. Believe me: you will root for this lost boy.”
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“In Demon Copperhead…Kingsolver channels the voice of a disenfranchised boy lost in the failures of our social system. It’s a testament to her storytelling mastery that this novel also illustrates how deeply intertwined our attitudes about nature are with our collective destiny. As always, her purpose is to make us think about the ways we all must look out for each other.”
— Arizona Republic
“Absorbing….Readers see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath Demon’s self-protective exterior…. Emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it…. An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.”
— Kirkus Review (Starred Review)
“Kingsolver’s capacious, ingenious, wrenching, and funny survivor’s tale is a virtuoso present-day variation on Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield….Kingsolver’s tour de force is a serpentine, hard-striking tale of profound dimension and resonance.”
— Booklist (Starred Review)
“A deeply evocative story…Kingsolver’s account of the opioid epidemic and its impact on the social fabric of Appalachia is drawn to heartbreaking effect. This is a powerful story, both brilliant in its many social messages regarding foster care, child hunger, and rural struggles, and breathless in its delivery.”
— Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“Kingsolver brings a notably different energy from her previous work to Demon Copperhead…through a tremendous narrative voice, one so sharp and fresh as to overwhelm the reader’s senses….Demon’s spirit comes through, and it is haunting. It’s the reason the pages keep turning….Kingsolver has made this story her own, and what a joy it is to slip into this world and inhabit it, even with all its challenges.”
— BookPage
“Demon Copperhead is a propulsive reading experience, energetic and funny while still conveying Kingsolver’s fury at the institutions that have let her community down.”
— Slate
“You’ll be enthralled by [Demon’s] voice, simultaneously hilarious and wise, as he illuminates life in rural America…..this is the ideal late-fall read to sink your teeth into.”
— Real Simple
“A dazzling novel….a lyrical re-dreaming of Dickens’s David Copperfield. The social injustices of Victorian England have been transplanted, with spellbinding success, to modern-day Appalachia…populated by America’s rural white underclass and now ravaged by the opioid crisis…Kingsolver maintains an astonishing level of energy and intensity….This novel is surely a highpoint of Kingsolver’s long career and a strong early candidate for next year’s Booker Prize.”
— Times Literary Supplement
“A riveting, epic tale…[Kingsolver’s] exquisite writing takes a wrenching story and makes it worthwhile… Kingsolver has given us a superb novel.”
— Christian Science Monitor
“…a heartrending, probing and ultimately hopeful tale about a young boy’s journey from devastation to survival….It’s hard to ascertain which is more brilliant, Kingsolver’s skill in modernizing Dickens’ narrative or the voice she gives to the privations and adversities facing the land and people she so dearly loves.”
— Atlanta Journal-Constitution
