Emotional journeys
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Faber & Faber, £20)
It’s a brave author who offers a fresh take on a Charles Dickens novel – his writing doesn’t even feel that old. But Barbara Kingsolver masterfully takes on the challenge with an updated
David Copperfield, swapping Victorian London for 1990s southern Appalachia at the dawn of the American opioid crisis.
“First, I got myself born,” begins the story of Damon Fields (soon to be known as Demon Copperhead, thanks to ever-inventive schoolchildren). Demon doesn’t mince words in bringing the reader up to speed on his world – his father is dead and his mother is addicted to opioids.
Kingsolver has fun introducing characters who are modern-day cousins of their Dickens ancestors. Demon’s stepfather “Stoner” is no less hateable than the original Mr Murdstone. He’s the first in a series of despicable adults who wield unearned power over Demon’s childhood.
In true Dickens fashion, the story moves along at pace, packing in dozens of characters and multiple road trips as the pendulum swings between setbacks and victories.
Even after he begins his social climb, Demon’s life, moving between foster care and the consequences of his own opioid addiction, is never secure.
It’s impossible not to root for Demon. His account is direct, confessional and, while many of his low points are gut-wrenchingly sad, few situations are so serious that they don’t warrant a surprise laugh.
This is a sensitive unveiling of injustice, racism and greed, packaged up in a mile-a-minute plot. A wonderful read and a deserving companion to Dickens’ original.
Lija Kresowaty
Maureen Fry And The Angel Of The North by Rachel Joyce (Doubleday, £14.99)
This novella is a coda to Rachel Joyce’s bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry but it also stands on its own two feet, taking us to the heart of a troubled but loving marriage.
Ten years have passed since Harold’s epic walk from Devon to Berwickon-tweed to visit his dying friend Queenie. Now in their seventies, neither Harold nor his spiky wife Maureen have come to terms with the suicide of their only son David, 30 years earlier.
Then a postcard arrives, telling the couple about a memorial garden that Queenie created at Berwick before she died. Maureen fears Queenie tried to take ownership of David’s memory so she feels compelled to drive to Berwick to see the garden for herself.
The journey becomes an ordeal as Maureen loses her way, skids on ice, gets stuck in traffic, and is prickly with everyone she encounters. And the garden, full of other people’s tributes to lost loved ones as well as Queenie’s carvings, appals Maureen. In trying to vandalise the memorial to David, she slips and ends up in hospital.
Forced by physical weakness to depend on others, Maureen finally opens up, and begins to understand herself. This short novel packs a big punch as Joyce paints an intimate portrait of fragility and grief, allowing us to experience unbearable pain but redemption too.