Bellies by Nicola Dinan
Published 2023
How hard is Bellies to read?
Bellies scores 51 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: 45 out of 100
- Plain contemporary vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
- Clear, easy sentences.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Concrete, with light reflection on transition.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Moderate.
- Narrative indirection: 52 out of 100
- Alternating first persons, both partial.
- Symbolic density: 48 out of 100
- Restrained.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Some distance between what each says and feels.
- Resolution withholding: 58 out of 100
- The relationship is left unsettled.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- Alternating viewpoints across years.
How Bellies is regarded
Bellies holds a literary regard score of 35 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.