#1 in Literary fiction
Demon Copperhead
- 560
- Pages
- about 10 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 35 weeks on the list, peaked at #4
- Women's Prize for Fiction
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
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Our view
Kingsolver moves “David Copperfield” to present-day Appalachia, and the transplant works: a boy’s passage through child poverty and the opioid crisis feels urgent, not borrowed. Some readers who know Dickens enjoy tracing the parallels, but the novel stands without them. It is a dark book: some find it hard to keep going at times, and across its 560 pages others feel the bleakness as more duty than pleasure.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Demon Copperhead is a 2022 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Kingsolver was inspired by the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield. While Kingsolver's novel is similarly about a boy who experiences poverty, Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia and explores contemporary issues. The book touches on themes of the social and economic stratification in Appalachia, child poverty in rural America, and drug addiction with a focus on the opioid crisis.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.8 across 875 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 86% of the weight and the score stays at 8.8 — the Literary fiction average of 8.1 barely moves it. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 9.1 | 7 | 1% |
| Hardcover | 8.8 | 868 | 99% |
Frequently asked
How long is Demon Copperhead?
It has 560 pages — longer than 82% of the ranked books in Literary fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Literary fiction — with scores between 8.3 and 8.7, closest to this book.
