"Storytelling on a grand scale."

When you get towards the end of a 548 page hardback novel and realise that  you have to resist the urge to check the last page to see what happens while at the same time not wanting it to end at all - that is the absolute essence of good storytelling.  And Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver has it in spades.

Billed as a  "reimagining" of David Copperfield but set in Kingsolver`s Appalachia it is by no means necessary to have read Dicken`s classic story before embarking on Demon Copperhead. Those who have will recognize some of the characters as playing much the same role as in the earlier novel. But what draws you in perhaps most powerfully in both cases is the relating of the story by the heroes themselves - if, indeed, as David Copperfield says, they turn out to be heroes.

The opening paragraph of Demon Copperhead immediately sets the tone, the language and not least the wry humour which runs through the whole sorry tale of a boy born into poverty of a drug addicted single mother:

                            "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."

And with that we are launched into an autobiography which rattles along at a breathless pace, following the fortunes and misfortunes of Damon, whose red hair and feral nature soon earn him his eponymous nickname. There`s a large and varied cast of characters whose lives touch Demon`s in one way or another, for better or worse, often as they also are dealing with their own crises of poverty, alienation, and drug addiction. 

As always with Kingsolver, politics and political structures are central to much of the plot but we are not being lectured at: much of Demon`s growing up demonstrates the abject failure of the very systems nominally there to support children in his position. Whether it is lack of resources, lack of political will,  a commentary on the forgotten communities in some parts of America - or indeed a combination of all these - is left for the reader to decide.

In any event it is impossible not to will Demon on, to celebrate his successes and despair when life throws him another curve ball. The writing never falters and with Kingsolver herself having grown up in Kentucky it feels like the story has been written as much from the heart as the head.