Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An attention-getter of an opening sentence

First I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they’ve always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being, let’s just say, out of it.

This is an engrossing yarn that is a biting indictment of the opioid epidemic let loose in America by the nefarious coven of “Big Pharma,” venal doctors, conniving pharmaceutical representatives, pharmacists, social workers and nurses. Loosely based on David Copperfield, the book also depicts the sordid and harsh foster care meted out to orphans. Finally, the disparaging views of the rest of America towards the so-called stereotype of “Hilly Billys, Red Necks” are scathingly illustrated. Parochialism out-does racism in this case – where the culture and accent of those people is ridiculed.
The scenes of the utter and degrading poverty have echoes of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London.
Here are some memorable extracts

Maybe there was a God in his Heaven after all, and we would all fart perfume...
It was that fall type of day where the world feels like it’s about to change its mind on everything. Cicadas going why-why-why, the air lying still, all the fight gone out of summer...
The wonder is that you start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.

Immensely readable, just unputdownable!

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