“Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient. I’m crazy about this book, which parses the epidemic in a beautiful and intimate new way. I think it’s her best.”
— Beth Macy, author of Dopesick
“An Appalachian David Copperfield…Demon Copperhead reimagines Dickens’s story in a modern-day rural America contending with poverty and opioid addiction…Kingsolver and Dickens overlap: both of them exuberant writers of social novels with a strong political message and a concern for the lower classes…Kingsolver’s novel sweeps you along just as powerfully as the original does…..”
— New York Times
“…the voice of Demon is so original…. straight-talking, alert, witty and hard to deceive. In other words, a defiant retort to stereotypes about Appalachia. He’s mouthy and smart in a contemporary way, but he’s making the same call for attention and compassion Charles Dickens did more than a century and a half ago.”
— USA Today
“Demon Copperhead may be the best novel of 2022…Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love….You may be reminded of another orphaned boy slipping through the country’s underbrush, just trying to stay out of trouble: Huck Finn. With Demon, Kingsolver has created an outcast equally reminiscent of Twain’s masterpiece, speaking in the natural poetry of the American vernacular….Kingsolver’s best demonstration yet of a novel’s ability to simultaneously entertain and move and plead for reform.””
— Ron Charles, Washington Post
“If you’re familiar with the Charles Dickens classic, you’ll follow the story’s beats and chuckle….What keeps you turning the pages is the knowledge that Demon has a future. The novel ends on a note of hope…not every fate is decided by the circumstances of one’s birth.”
— Associated Press
“There’s really nothing like being immersed in a Kingsolver novel….Damon [is Kingsolver’s] bravest, most ambitious creation yet.”
— Los Angeles Times
“An epic…brimming with vitality and outrage….the rare 560-page book you wish would never end.”
— People “Book of the Week”!
“With its bold reversals of fate and flamboyant cast, this is storytelling on a grand scale….As Demon discovers, owning his story – every part of it – and finding a way to tell it is how he’ll wrest some control over his life. And what a story it is: acute, impassioned, heartbreakingly evocative, told by a narrator who’s a product of multiple failed systems, yes, but also of a deep rural landscape with its own sustaining traditions.”
— The Guardian
“An extraordinary new novel….Much like Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain or Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, Kingsolver’s epic is narrated by a self-professed screwup with a heart of gold…chock-full of cinematic twists and turns. It’s a book that demands we start paying attention to — and embracing — a long-ignored community and its people.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“A brilliant story…A page turner and Kingsolver’s best novel by far…. Kingsolver has some of Mark Twain in her, along with 21st-century gifts of her own. More than ever, she is our literary mirror and window. May this novel be widely read and championed.”
— Minneapolis Star-Tribune
