Bibliokitty

Demon Copperhead is a modern take on Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield – they have a similar narrative structure and many of the characters have the same names. Demon Copperhead is set in the 1990s and early 2000s and is about an orphaned boy caught up in the opioid crisis in the poor mining communities targeted by Purdue Pharma (the makers of OxyContin). The protagonist is Damon Fields, nicknamed Demon Copperhead because of the copper-coloured hair he inherited from his father who died before he was born, who grows up in Lee County, Virginia. Demon Copperhead, like David Copperfield, is a likeable character that you want to root for, but unlike David, Demon tends towards self-destruction instead of striving to change his situation, which is understandable growing up in a part of the country that has been ravaged by opioids and made the butt of many hillbilly jokes. Demon Copperhead is a heavy read, but I think it is a great novel.

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I have read Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere and thought it was a good, interesting novel, but I was not blown away by it. So, when Our Missing Hearts was released recently, I did not initially feel the need to read it. But then Indigo named it the best book of the year, and I knew that I must read it. I am not completely sold on it being the best book of the year, but Our Missing Hearts is a great, timely novel that tells a compelling story that I devoured in one day.

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Jonathan Franzen’s novels may not be for everyone as they are more character-driven then plot-driven. Crossroads is no exception as the main events take place on a single day, December 23, 1971, with introspective flashbacks that allow readers to get to the heart of each character. That is what I appreciate about Crossroads, by no means a joyous read, which is the opportunity to dive deep into the psyche of the richly imagined and authentic characters created by Franzen.

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My Year of Rest and Relaxation is one of the more bizarre novels I have ever read, but I liked it and found it to be darkly funny and compulsively readable.

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Homeland Elegies is an intriguing mix of autobiography and fiction. The protagonist is named after the author, Ayad Akhtar. The fictional Ayad is a writer and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a successful play called Disgraced, just like the real Ayad. The fictional Ayad’s father is a doctor, just like the real Ayad’s father. These little bits of fact will make you wonder, as you read the novel, how many other details are based on actual events that happened to the author. Ayad Akhtar does this on purpose as a commentary on the confusion between fact and fiction that we see today in social media and the news. What is truth? What is “fake news”? Are we discerning enough to not take things at face value? It is this blending of fact and fiction that initially attracted me to read Homeland Elegies, and I am very glad that I read it.

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