Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - Review

Demon Copperhead was the February choice for my book club, and I started listening to it way back in January. I had finished Cuddy in good time before our meeting, so I decided to start this. It is LONG, it's like 23 hours of audiobook time. So I was getting a good start, I thought!

But then, it's just SO depressing. I didn't realise that it's meant to be a modern retelling of David Copperfield, set in the 90s in the opiate addiction crisis in the south of the USA. Maybe if I had known that to begin with I would know what I was getting into, but I didn't, so. Not that I am particularly familiar with the plot of David Copperfield, but I do know it's depressing, so that might have helped. 

Demon is the protagonist of the novel and it's all told from his point of view. His real name is Damon, but most kids call him Demon. He lives with his mom in a trailer on land belonging to the Peggots. She is a teen mother and an addict. Demon gets close to the Peggots' grandson, Matt, whose mom is in prison. He is better known as Maggot and he becomes a goth teenager which was quite funny. 

Demon's dad died before he was born, and there's little other family around. Life is hard. Then his mother takes up with a guy called Stoner who is incredibly abusive towards Demon. His mom overdoses and goes to rehab and Demon enters foster care for the first time. He is with an old farmer nicknamed Creaky, who has four boys in his care and who is abusive towards each of them. The eldest one, Fast Forward, is popular and the others dote on him. He introduces them to drugs. 

Demon's mother overdoses again and dies, and Stoner takes off so Demon ends up in foster care with a family only in it for the money. He is forced to sleep in the dog room and is starved by the family. He works for a man called Ghali and manages to save up some money. Just before his foster family move a way away, Demon takes off, determined to hitchhike to Tennessee to find his dad's mother. He considers Knoxville, where Maggot's aunt and cousin live, but ends up in Tennessee. He finds his grandma and spends a few happy weeks with her and her disabled brother, but ultimately they can't keep him. But they find better foster care for him, in the shape of Coach and his daughter Angus, who are vaguely family. 

Demon is good at football and Coach starts to whip him in to shape as a star player. As he moves into high school he is quite popular because he plays for the team, and he meets a girl called Dori. He injures his knee playing football and thus begins an addiction to opioids himself. I know that he ends up with Dori for a while, but unfortunately I don't know the end of the book because I had to give up on it. It is SO depressing. I liked Demon a lot and felt for him, but everything just kept going wrong and even when it went mostly right - like when he's living with Coach and Angus - he sabotages it and then life shits on him some more. I just couldn't listen to more than just over half. I'm counting it though because I listened to over half of it, so there. Three out of five. 

 

The Chemist by A A Dhand - Review

I bought this book at the crime book festival that I went to at the end of January. A A Dhand was there, and I didn't realise he was the author of the TV series Virdee, which is set in Bradford and which I watched a few episodes of. He was talking about this, his new book, and I liked the sound of it so I bought it and got him to sign it for me. He is a really lovely person, but I didn't enjoy the book that much.

It's about a pharmacist, Idris, who has a pharmacy in Headingley in Leeds. He is married to Maryam, a GP, but he has an ex wife, Rebecca, who he is still in touch with and who he's still fond of. He deals a lot with methadone users - who come to the pharmacy daily to take their methadone under supervision - and he has a lot to do with the local sex workers of Beeston. Rebecca does too as part of her job, so when a sex worker called Amy calls on her, Rebecca goes to help. 

Amy's punter was a man called Patrick, who is part of a big crime family, and he's just got out of prison. He tries to pull a fast one on Amy, she calls Rebecca, and Rebecca kills him. Then she phones Idris for help. He does indeed try to cover it up, with the help of a local called Al, a Syrian refugee, who is a drug runner inside a notorious load of high rise flats called The Moorings. Idris has been blackmailed into providing drugs for the estate, because his money is in short supply and he is scared of the kingpins there. 

It's a very complicated and convoluted plot and it was just so confusing for me. Then there's a few people whose names are really similar - for example two men called Daniel and Damon - which made it hard to keep them straight in my head. Every time I thought the plot surely had to be over now, something else would pop up and someone else would come along and threaten Idris and he would have to make even stupider decisions. 

I did like Idris and I liked Rebecca as well. I couldn't tell you if I liked Maryam (I'm not even certain on the spelling of her name) because she's in it for like two scenes. I understand that this book is the first part of a series and I would like to read more for Idris, but I am just not putting myself through it again. It's way too complicated for me. 

Two out of five.