Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Published 1995 · 381 pages · 95,250 words · about 11 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
How hard is Behind the Scenes at the Museum to read?
Behind the Scenes at the Museum scores 50 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: 38 out of 100
- Yorkshire and 20th-century British vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
- Ruby's distinctive voice with footnotes.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Family secrets and history.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with family and 20th-century history.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Secrets revealed through footnotes.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The museum, family, secrets carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Atkinson's humor operates through irony.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Secrets revealed but losses remain.
- Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
- Ruby's life interspersed with family history.
How Behind the Scenes at the Museum is regarded
Behind the Scenes at the Museum holds a literary regard score of 55 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.