Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver

Faber €18.99

Fans of Kingsolver know to expect weighty issues wrapped up in an entertaining plot, and that’s exactly what she offers in this epic coming-of-age tale, which brings Dickens’s David Copperfield into the era of the opioid crisis. Ten-year-old Damon lives in a trailer in Virginia with his violent stepfather and teenage mother, whose overdose leaves him at the mercy of abusive foster carers. As he struggles to survive, the novel barrels from one heartbreak to the next with gallows humour and lapel-grabbing verve. Anthony Cummins