![]() ![]() ![]() In the Appalachian region of Virginia, we live with the terrible inadequacies of the US foster and adoption systems. Born an orphan to a single mother who is an addict, we follow the ups and downs (a lot of downs!) of his life. The novel tells the story of Copperhead from birth until adulthood. Even the names she uses for her characters are a call-out to the ones in David Copperfield. It is narrated like “Copperfield” in the first person by Demon. ![]() She also adopted its structure: longish with short chapters, with hooks at the end of each to nudge you into the next chapter. Inspired by a visit to Bleak House, a house where Dickens lived near Broadstairs, Kent, and had written David Copperfield, she decided to “outsource” her plot and many characters to Dickens’ masterpiece. She follows in the footsteps of writers like Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Elizabeth Gaskell, John Steinbeck, and Toni Morrison. Unlike many novelists writing today, she tells the lives of working people in an empathetic and political way. She is a feminist, an ecologist, and very critical of big business and the military-industrial complex. Barbara Kingsolver is one of the best living writers of the socially engaged novel. ![]()
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