Demon Copperhead

According to the review aggregator website Books Marks, Demon Copperhead received mostly positive reviews from critics.[10] Ron Charles of The Washington Post praises Demon Copperhead as his "favorite novel of 2022"[11] as it is "equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love."[11] Writing for The Guardian, Elizabeth Lowry contends that "while the task of modernising [Dicken's] novel is complicated by the fact that mores have shifted so radically since the mid-19th century … the ferocious critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children is as pertinent as ever."[12] However, Lorraine Berry of The Boston Globe criticizes the novel as poverty porn, arguing that, "In seeking to raise awareness of child hunger and poverty in the United States, Kingsolver turns her characters’ lives into tales of misery and the inevitability of failure. Her characters wallow in dark hollows with little light, condemned to forever repeat the horrific mistakes of previous generations. She makes the people of Appalachia into objects of pity, but in doing so, also intimates that falling into drug abuse, rejecting education, and 'clinging' to their ways are moral choices."[13]