A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler
Published 1999 · 302 pages · 75,500 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is A Patchwork Planet to read?
A Patchwork Planet scores 37 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: 30 out of 100
- Tyler's characteristically accessible prose.
- Sentence structure: 32 out of 100
- Clean, conversational sentences.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Questions of redemption and family through ordinary life.
- Information density: 35 out of 100
- Spare Baltimore family detail.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Barnaby's limited self-awareness creates gaps.
- Symbolic density: 40 out of 100
- The angel, odd jobs, family carry thematic weight.
- Ironic distance: 40 out of 100
- Tyler's warmth tempered by clear-eyed observation.
- Resolution withholding: 40 out of 100
- Modest resolution; life continues.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- First-person chronological narrative.
How A Patchwork Planet is regarded
A Patchwork Planet 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.