Demon Copperhead

Low rating has much more to do with my (lack of) enjoyment than the technical aspects.

TLDR - heavy content which clearly a lot of people enjoyed, but imo was quickly redundant, a chore, and unnecessary and that's before getting into over dramatization

I finished this purely out of spite not wanting it to be my first ever DNF. We picked it up for book club in July 2023 (personally finishing it May 2024). Definitely don't pick this up expecting to digest it within a month if you'd like to also enjoy your life.

The Voice of the writing is distinct enough to set it apart from other books, and I enjoyed the author's way of setting a scene, particularly those with nature as their backdrop.

This book is a slog. While the ending (hinting at a happy relationship ahead of him) might disqualify this book from being labeled as tragedy porn, it definitely felt like poverty porn. It is literally one thing after another the first half the book, then a brief glimmer of things turning around for Demon, then back to getting the shit kicked out of you, picking up pace in the last 150 pages but dropping off again in the last 60. By the time he finally made it to the Devil's Bathtub, I found myself hoping he would die there so at least he'd be free of his life of torment and I'd only have to read the musings of a ghost from there. I did tear up a few times, but not because I felt attached to or liked any one character, it was always from the needless cruelty of the situation at hand. The last half of the book this idea that “mountain folk” are constantly misrepresented in media comes up multiple times, but yet this book paints every character and family you spend any meaningful time with as having tragic existences only which I find deeply disingenuous of rural life. The Peggots family is the closest you get to seeing people enjoy their rural life and even that is painted with all these undertones of “lesser”. In the end, Demon feels all this nostalgia for idyllic scenes typical of rural life, but we never got to see him experience any of that. Most of the word count is devoted to seeing how much neglect can be packed into one kid's life.

I dreaded picking this book up. I got to where I was bribing myself to read just one chapter. I seriously considered ending it once he had a happy season with Coach and Angus because that was the first good thing that had happened all book and I really wasn't interested in watching the rug get yanked out from under Demon (and me, the reader!) yet again. The bad things kind of lost their impact for me because they were so predictable. Maybe if I had skipped to the last chapter and known I had something other than a tragic ending to look forward to, then I could have powered through a little quicker than 9 months.

Even with books I don't jive with, I often walking away feeling glad I had read it to find out it wasn't for me. I do not have that feeling with this book, simply relief that it is finally over.