Photo by Sean Foster on Unsplash
I probably said enough about Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s 2022 instant classic, in my full review, which you can read by clicking the link above. It’s a whole lot more than Dickens in the Virginia coal country. It’s heart and soul and philosophy wrapped in Kingsolver’s literary art.
If I underplayed anything in the review I think it was the philosophical aspect, perhaps better labeled a theological anthropology. The titular character, Demon, is looking back on this story with an adult’s eye and musing about how things got to where they did in the devastated, opioid-scarred landscape of Lee County. So you get periodic lines like this:
If the grown-up version of me could have one chance at walking backwards into this story, part of me wishes I could sit down on the back pew with that pissed-off kid in his overly tight church clothes and Darkhawk attitude, and tell him: You think you’re giant but you are such a small speck in the screwed-up world. This is not about you. (109)
It’s the inner demons that get you. The way the world around you preys upon our in-built desires. And so our choices turn tragic:
People find more ways to shut up their monsters than a Bible has verses. (368)
There’s light at the end of this tunnel, though, and even along the way if you look for it. That comes through ultimately in this affecting book, which has stayed with me perhaps more than any other read this year.
The recency bias of this rating system ultimately prevailed, however, so #1 in the 2024 Best Reads list was a book published this year. That will be the subject of my next post along with a recap and some additional recommendations from a great year in reading.
The list so far:
#3 – The Known World by Edward P. Jones
#4 – Zero at the Bone by Christian Wiman
#5 – The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
#6 – The Ninety-Third Name of God by Anya Krugovoy Silver
#7 – Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
#8 – The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Heartlands 
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