A Little MS with a Little MSW

I am an avid reader. Always have been. My favorite genre is psychological thrillers, although I have been known to dabble in historical fiction and romance.

My most recent read is a coming-of-age story, based on Dickens’ David Copperfield, about a boy named Damon, a product of the foster care system, It came highly recommended by hundreds of my closest internet strangers.

While I am good at reading, I am not great at reviewing, but this one deserves a mention. This was my first read by Barbara Kingsolver and she is truly a masterful writer. Her prose is beautiful and poetic, and her talent was not lost on me; however, given that ‘Demon’ is told from a first-person perspective, her poetic prose was a bit I’ll-fitting at best, for the would-be thoughts of an uneducated teenage addict.

I liked Demon, but I can’t help but think that if the prose had remained “in character,” the book would have been significantly shorter and perhaps just as poignant.

The intended themes of loss, hardship, desperation, and resilience are still adequately woven into the verbosity, though, and this novel will leave me imagining Demon’s endless possible futures for quite some time in the pages left unwritten by the highly imaginative author who brought him to life for me.