Daily writing prompt

What’s the longest book you’ve ever read?

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Technically, the answer is the Bible. But I’m guessing that’s not really what the WordPress prompt is asking.

So, if we’re talking about a traditional book, I think the longest I’ve ever read is Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, which comes in at somewhere around 550 pages, depending on the edition.

I’m generally not one for long books. Give me a good story, tell it well and don’t make me spend three weeks getting to the point. But Demon Copperhead was different. It took me a while to finish it simply because there was so much of it, but I picked it up every chance I got. I never found myself wondering when it was going to end. If anything, I wanted to know what was going to happen next.

Part of what made it so much fun for me was that I’d never read Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, the novel Kingsolver used as the framework for Demon’s story. That meant I had absolutely no idea where any of this was heading. I wasn’t waiting for certain characters to appear or recognizing plot points that had been transplanted from Victorian England into Appalachia. I was just following Demon and desperately hoping the kid would eventually catch a break.

And I became invested in who might finally make him happy. For a while, I wanted it to be Dori. Later, I found myself pulling for Emmy. By the time the story finally arrived at Angus, though, it made complete sense. She had been there in a way the others hadn’t, and the relationship felt less like a dramatic romantic payoff than something Demon had finally grown enough to recognize.

Then the two of them headed toward the ocean.

After everything Demon had endured, there was something completely fulfilling about that ending. The kid who had spent so much of his life trapped by circumstances, geography, addiction, poverty and the terrible decisions of the people around him was finally headed somewhere he had always wanted to go, with someone who genuinely belonged beside him.

So, yes, Demon Copperhead was probably the longest traditional book I’ve ever read.

It was also one of those rare long books that never made me wish it were shorter.

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