A Stellar Year for Women’s Writing

On the evening of June 14, 2023 the judges, authors and many fans came together for the announcement of the winner of the women’s prize for fiction. You may remember these six novels were on the shortlist:

The 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction is Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead!

In her speech Barbara Kingsolver said:

“There is no best novel, there is just a best novel for each one of us, that is what is amazing and magical about literature…Literature is how we make our hearts grow bigger and that is how we change the world.”

Institutional Poverty and the Effect on Children

Demon Copperhead is a heartfelt, gritty, poignant novel set in the Appalachian mountains in Virginia, USA. A re-imagining of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield for modern times, it tells the story of the relentless struggles and triumphs of a young boy born into poverty as he navigates foster care, labour exploitation, addiction, love and loss, while grappling with his invisibility in a culture that neglects rural communities.

I do love a good Barbara Kingsolver novel and have been a fan ever since reading the novel she is most well known for, The Poisonwood Bible. Since then, I have read and reviewed here, The Lacuna (2009) (her 6th novel and also winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2010), Prodigal Summer (2000) (5th novel) and Flight Behaviour (2012)(7th novel). Winning this year makes her the first double winner for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in its 28 year history.

Demon Copperhead, from all I have read in reviews, was always going to be an award winning and popular novel, and many are calling it the novel Barbara Kingsolver was destined to write.

As Chair of judges, author and journalist Louise Minchin said:

“Barbara Kingsolver has written a towering, deeply powerful and significant book. In a year of outstanding fiction by women, we made a unanimous decision on Demon Copperhead as our winner. Brilliant and visceral, it is storytelling by an author at the top of her game. We were all deeply moved by Demon, his gentle optimism, resilience and determination despite everything being set against him.

An exposé of modern America, its opioid crisis and the detrimental treatment of deprived and maligned communities, Demon Copperhead tackles universal themes – from addiction and poverty, to family, love, and the power of friendship and art – it packs a triumphant emotional punch, and is a novel that will withstand the test of time.”

I am definitely going to read it, it was also co-recipient of the 2023 American Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It might be time to dust off the Dickens as well.

Have you read Demon Copperhead, or do you think you might be tempted?