- This magnificent novel won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, along wth Hernan Diaz's Trust (which I reviewed here). Two magnificent achievements.
- Kingsolver was inspired by Charles Dickens’s classic David Copperfield when she holidayed in the UK in 2018 and stayed in a Victorian guesthouse that had once been Dickens's seaside residence. She became inspired by ‘…his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society. Those problems are still with us.’
- Her setting is the US states of Kentucky and Virginia. Demon, the young narrator, is a mixed-race Melungeon, with dark skin, light-green eyes, and red hair. His father died the summer before he was born, and his mother is now a junky living in a dilapidated trailer - 'trailer trash' by definition. Demon tells his story - from the day he was born - in sharp, punchy, robust prose which is a pleasure to read.
- Foster parents and cruel abusive men are front and centre. And the experience is ugly in the extreme. Kids are treated as slaves and Kingsolver does not spare us any details. She is relentless.
- Demon is sent from one foster home to another, some good most bad, but one saving grace is the other kids he meets and the lasting friendships they make. These become the core of the novel.
- In Middle School he gets very good at football but suffers a bad knee injury which ends a promising future. His treatments include strong pain-killing drugs, and their common availability results in opioid addiction. Many of his friends become victims. He refers at one point to Charles Dickens and the ‘kids and orphans getting screwed over and nobody giving a rat’s ass’.
- His art teacher at school knows he has real creative talent, and tries hard to get him to resume lessons and develop his craft. A local librarian helps him set up a website and brand for his popular comics. There are adults in this unsavoury journey that do care. And they end up making a real difference. Some kids grow up to be mature adults, but so many others fall away, and die. 'A whole generation of kids were coming up without families'.
- Kingsolver has written a long book - 550 pages - and one that buries you in an ugliness that is often overwhelming. But there are saviours and survivors, and they lift you up. And you will be immersed in the beauty of her writing.
For the kids who wake up hungry in those dark places every day, who've lost their families to poverty and pain pills, whose caseworkers keep losing their files, who feel invisible, or wish they were: this book is for you. (Acknowledgments)
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