I’m not sure why it took me so long to read Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. It’s been out for almost a year, and I knew it won the Pulitzer, and for 30 years I’ve read and re-read and adored David Copperfield, from which it takes its story and characters, in quite exact ways at many turns.
When I listen to an audiobook, I regard it as reading the book. You should, too, and you shouldn’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t count. The narrator of this audiobook, Charlie Thurston, is pretty much perfect. His feel for the material and style of delivery matches the tone of the novel right down to the core. The actor/playwright/narrator isn’t from the south, as far as I can discover. (Watch his acting reel.) Yet he pulls off the Appalachian regional accent to my ear. I’d be curious to know how people from the area perceive it.
Does an audiobook count as an adaptation? Only if it’s a full-cast treatment of a book? No, I think any reading constitutes an adaptation.
I ended up re-reading David Copperfield as soon as I finished Demon, so I could check some assumptions about how the characters matched up. I’d only ever read my old broken hard cover before, so I had to shop for the right audiobook in Audible. I chose the one narrated by Richard Armitage because he’s an actor I like, and the sample seemed to show me that he could pull off a credible soft child’s voice. (David Copperfield is told in the first person, and a huge, important first chunk of the story happens when he’s just an innocent little guy.)
In my shopping expedition I was compelled to add an upcoming release from Audible Originals that sounds like it might be amazing. Here’s the description: “In an Audible Original dramatization, executive produced by Academy Award-winning film director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, 1917), come on a journey with David Copperfield as he finds his way in a challenging world. Starring Ncuti Gatwa (Sex Education, Barbie) in the title role, and featuring an all-star cast including Helena Bonham Carter (Sweeney Todd), Theo James (The White Lotus), Jessie Buckley (Chernobyl), Richard Armitage (The Hobbit), Jack Lowden (Slow Horses) and Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy).”
I wonder which character Armitage reads. He does a nice job with the unabridged narrative read — sustaining it for more than 36 hours! For the first time in a long while, my own subconscious brain made a weird fanciful little adaptation of a section of the book after I fell asleep listening to the Armitage read. You probably wouldn’t count that as an adaptation, especially the bit where characters ran away from a 200-pound iguana in Miss Trotwood’s garden. Me, I define adaptations that broadly. Because who says I can’t?
The novel has been adapted many times into mini-series and films going back to the silent film era. Before that, even in Dickens time, wildcat producers brought the story to the stage. I’m partial to the 1999 BBC two-parter featuring a baby Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) who is cute as a button.