A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Published 2017 · 261 pages · 41,500 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
How hard is A Kind of Freedom to read?
A Kind of Freedom scores 41 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: 32 out of 100
- Clear contemporary prose with New Orleans vernacular.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Three distinct generational voices, all accessible.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Questions of race and family through concrete experience.
- Information density: 40 out of 100
- Three generations efficiently interwoven.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- Three perspectives illuminate different eras.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- Freedom, home, and New Orleans carry thematic weight.
- Ironic distance: 35 out of 100
- Sexton writes with evident care for her characters.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- Family continues; systemic issues persist.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Three generations across different eras.
How A Kind of Freedom is regarded
A Kind of Freedom holds a literary regard score of 52 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.