Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
Published 2005 · 384 pages · 96,000 words · about 11 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Amy and Isabelle to read?
Amy and Isabelle scores 40 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 American prose with small-town vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Accessible sentences following mother-daughter tension.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Questions of secrets and mother-daughter bonds.
- Information density: 38 out of 100
- Small-town Maine efficiently depicted.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- Secrets revealed gradually.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- The mill town, the affair, the heat carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 40 out of 100
- Strout writes with empathy for both women.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- Relationship continues; healing begins.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Straightforward narrative with secrets.
How Amy and Isabelle is regarded
Amy and Isabelle holds a literary regard score of 62 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.