A Dickensian universe in a swoon

Barbara Kingsolver's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel grapples with the harsh realities of childhood in a world of unstable adults

The grown-up world is no place for children. And yet, every day they are born into its filthy air, its wars, its accidents, its pestilences, its loveless homes. Adults can be such racketeers, trafficking in innocence. Their brood must learn early to negotiate for a bit of space, or crumbs of sustenance, or a voice in the din, or a small share of kindness.

The Bildungsroman depicts, with fiction’s ripe interiority, the predicaments of a young protagonist who must navigate a wretched fate in a world full of unstable adults. In Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, which won the Pulitzer Prize this