Finished reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver whilst sitting in the park watching a little girl with a unicorn bicylce helmet learn how to ride a bicycle without stabilisiers. It's one of those books, I think, that would be an excellent book to read as part of a book club. Because even if you know David Copperfield by Dickens, that work is only used as a framework for Demon and his Mum and Angus and Maggot and June and Emmy and Tommy and the Peggots and Dori and all of the people he meets and gets abandoned by and forgotten about.
It's a story about addiction and homelessness and looked after children and the failiure of the state and the breaking down of steretypes of Applachian culture and Demon's desire to see the ocean and to have a better chance at life than the hand that he's been given but always knowing that that is the hand that he's been given. And it's brilliant.