Kingsolver takes David Copperfield and sets it in the opioid crisis in rural Appalachia. It sounds like a literary exercise. It is not. Demon is one of the most vivid, furious, and heartbreaking narrators in recent fiction — a boy born into a system designed to fail him, telling his own story with a voice that is funny and devastating in equal measure.
The Dickens parallel is never laboured; it’s structural scaffolding, not a gimmick. This won the Pulitzer for a reason. It’s the kind of novel that makes you angry in the right direction.
Year 2022
Price £9.99
Category Literary Fiction