Demon Copperhead

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 560 pages

 

Barbara Kingsolver’s 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a modern retelling of Charles Dicken’s David Copperhead except that it is set in Virginia’s southern Appalachian Mountains. However, Demon’s story makes David’s story read like a rom com it is so bleak. I’m surprised that neither Kingsolver nor Demon were suicidal.

 

The book starts at the beginning, with Demon’s birth, there on the bathroom floor of the single-wide trailer where he and his teenage mom live, surrounded by her drug paraphernalia. He arrives fully enclosed in the sac. According to the neighbor, that is a sure sign that the child, officially named Damon, will not die by water. Little comfort for the child as he grows up.

 

Demon’s dad is dead; his mom is a drug addict, but somehow, they manage. Life is hard, and the boy with copper-colored hair knows hunger and learns early how to scrounge. His mom tries, sort of. Thanks heavens for the neighbors, the Peggots.

 

Amazon reviewer Stephanie McCall wrote it best: “Barbara Kingsolver just plain nailed these characters, these settings, this life story of her modern, Appalachian David Copperfield. I not only felt for, but felt with and not only traveled with, but traveled inside, Demon all the way from his home next door to the Peggott's, to Creaky's farm, to the McCobb's, to Coach Winfield's and everywhere in between. I can't say every place and character was one I grew to love. I mean, come on, some of these people are downright cruel or downright creeps. But they were three-dimensional and I could at least understand them. And even the situations and scenes at which I cringed, left an impression on me.”

 

During scope of this novel, Demon ages from newborn to almost eighteen. He caught a break here and there, but not often. And when he did, it was heartbreaking when he lost it.

 

Kingsolver also does an amazing job in depicting the opioid crisis the dominates that part of the country.

 

Demon has one goal in life: To see the ocean. And each time he gets close, the proverbial rug is pulled out from under him.

 

This is one of those books that I could not stop reading, yet at times I had to put it down because it hurt too bad to read more. Demon Copperhead receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

Poems and Letters

Poems and Letters (Volume 1) by St Sidonius Apollinaris, translated by WB Anderson, 241 pages

The 5th century is generally regarded as the century that saw the end of the Roman Empire in the West.  In 410, Alaric sacked Rome.  A few decades later, the Vandals took possession of North Africa, while the Anglo-Saxons invaded Roman Britain and Attila ravaged Italy and Gaul.  Finally, in 476, the Emperor Romulus was deposed by his general Odoacer, who sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople.

Sidonius Apollinaris witnessed much of this history.  Born into the aristocracy of Roman Gaul, he died under the heel of the barbarian Burgundians.  He composed a panegyric celebrating the accession of his father-in-law Avitus as Emperor, and another a few years later exalting Avitus' usurper Majorian, and another a few years later celebrating the accession of Majorian's successor's successor, Anthemius.  As bishop of Auvergne, he rallied the people during the siege of that city by the Goths, and was imprisoned by the victors after the city fell.  After his release he resumed his ministry to the vanquished, as well as his correspondence with figures ranging from his fellow Gallic bishops to barbarian kings and princes.

Admittedly, even the best poems of Sidonius have more antiquarian than aesthetic interest.  The fading of the classical world is exemplified by the Christian saint's invocation of pagan deities in praise of ephemeral emperors created and destroyed by barbarian generals.  More subtle are Sidonius' overriding concern with form at the expense of sense and his own distance from the literary masters of Augustan Rome he strives to imitate.  And yet the decadence itself presumes continuity, and Sidonius and his correspondents provide ample evidence of the stubborn persistence of Latin culture despite political disintegration.

Child of God

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy, 197 pages

Lester Ballard: orphan, bully, vagrant, looking for love in all the wrong places.

Lester Ballard: troglodyte, serial killer, necrophile, "a child of God much like yourself perhaps."

One of McCarthy's earliest novels, Child of God is a powerful tale told in what would soon become his trademark style - simple, brutal, and direct.

Jayber Crow

Jayber Crow: A Novel: The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself by Wendell Berry, 363 pages

For decades Jonah Crow (aka J Crow, aka J Bird, aka Jayber) was the barber in the small town of Port William, Kentucky.  As he himself says, a barber is a magnet for stories, especially in the kind of small town where his shop serves as one of the few social spaces.  In addition, Jayber served for years as the church custodian and gravedigger, giving him even more opportunities to know the people of the town, and to share in their living and dying.  He is, however, also something of an outsider, being both an orphan, raised and educated elsewhere, and a lifelong bachelor.  The novel is the story of how he comes to understand his own living and dying through the trials and travails, virtues and vices of those around him.

Jayber Crow, the novel, is as charming and unpretentious as its protagonist, likewise it is just as patient and unexpectedly deep - unexpected, at least, for those unfamiliar with Berry's other work.  For those who do know Berry, his usual themes are masterfully elaborated here - love of neighbor and care for the earth, the importance of community and sense of place, the reality of a cosmic order and the sacredness of work.

I'll Take My Stand

I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition by 12 Southerners, 385 pages

The twentieth century was a time in American history when virtually everyone in a position of power or influence - from Ivy League intellectuals and Washington politicians to the members of the local Chamber of Commerce - sought an answer to the problems created by "progress" in more and more "progress", a faster and faster race to the bottom of the spiral of their neverending war with nature.  In such a time, the "backwardness" of the South became an advantage.  I'll Take My Stand, first published in 1930, collects twelve essays that cut deeply against the prevailing grain, calling for an anti-industrial counter-revolution and a reconnection with the land.  In complimentary but not identical ways the authors sought the development of more human ways of living, emerging from their own integral humanism, an awareness that a truly human life cannot be founded on mechanism with culture added, but must begin with a humane foundation.

Any book rooted in the Old South must face the issue of race, and it is here, unsurprisingly, that I'll Take My Stand has its greatest problems.  Generally, blacks are treated as invisible, or worse, as the unwitting dupes of Northern interests.  The history of slavery is revised so as to absolve the South of all moral responsibility, with the Civil War cast as a simple power struggle between centralizing Northern interests and the provincialist South.  Fortunately, the authors' racial attitudes (which some of them, at least, later revised), although distracting, do not effect the power of the book's central arguments.  Those are of interest to anyone who shares in the perpetual hope that intelligence may yet conquer greed.

Secrets of Southern Girls

Secrets of Southern Girls by Haley Harrigan 400 pages

 Julie Portland killed her best friend, Reba, in 1998. In the ten years since, Julie has left their small hometown of Lawrence Mill, Mississippi, for New York. She attended NYU, studied acting, married a classmate who becomes a Broadway star, has a baby, divorces said classmate, and is now trying to make ends meet. Her daughter, Beck, is the light of her life. Julie has lived a full life, but every day that goes by, she remembers that girl from Mississippi---the one she killed.

In a crowded, Manhattan restaurant, Julie sees a man from her past: the man who came between Reba and herself. She tries to escape, but the man, August, manages to track her down to her apartment.

August hasn’t come there to cast blame or seek revenge; he’s come to New York to persuade Julie to return to Mississippi and free Reba’s memories. What follows is a page-turning story where author Harrigan feeds readers information slowly, like a stray breeze on a hot and humid Mississippi afternoon. Sometimes the tension is almost unbearable, and there are several twists in the story that I didn’t see coming.

August is sure there Reba left behind a journal that could unlock the mystery of her death. Julie may feel that is responsible for her friend’s death, but August isn’t convinced she is. He knows that the journal holds the answers to all his questions.

Dueling timelines between 1997 and 2008 make for fascinating reading. Especially when Toby, Julie’s cousin, enters the picture. I wanted to give this debut 6 stars, but it dragged a bit about two-thirds through, but picked back up near the end. Therefore, Secrets of Southern Girls receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.