Wednesday, August 30, 2023
12 - 1 p.m.
Virtual meetings are typically the last Wednesday of the month at 12 p.m. CT
This month we will have an open discussion on Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
There will not be a book club meeting during July. Thus, there will also be a discussion on David Copperfield by Charles Dickens following the Demon Copperhead conversation during the August virtual book club meeting for anyone that would like to read this book as well and stay on the Zoom call.
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damage to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours.
Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.
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