A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
Published 2006 · 255 pages · 88,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Satire & Humor
How hard is A Disorder Peculiar to the Country to read?
A Disorder Peculiar to the Country scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 35 out of 100
- Contemporary American prose, straightforward and sharp.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Clear, punchy sentences matching dark comedy tone.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Questions of American response to 9/11 through dark satire.
- Information density: 40 out of 100
- Efficiently constructed satire of marriage and nation.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- Dual perspectives on same marriage create ironic gaps.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- 9/11, the divorce, the children become darkly symbolic.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- Kalfus's satire of post-9/11 America is savage.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- Marriage and national fate intertwine in dark conclusion.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- Alternating husband/wife perspectives with national events.
How A Disorder Peculiar to the Country is regarded
A Disorder Peculiar to the Country holds a literary regard score of 54 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.