A Previous Life by Edmund White
Published 2021 · 79,200 words · about 6 hours at an average pace
How hard is A Previous Life to read?
A Previous Life scores 57 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. 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: 58 out of 100
- Rich, candid vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- Long, elegant sentences.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Concrete, with a running argument about reputation.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Moderate.
- Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
- Two lovers reading their own accounts aloud to each other.
- Symbolic density: 48 out of 100
- The manuscripts carry the theme.
- Ironic distance: 58 out of 100
- Distance between each account and the other's.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- The competing versions are never reconciled.
- Structural complexity: 62 out of 100
- Alternating written confessions inside a frame.
How A Previous Life is regarded
A Previous Life holds a literary regard score of 39 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.