Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Published 2021 · 304 pages · 76,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Bewilderment to read?
Bewilderment scores 49 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: 42 out of 100
- Scientific vocabulary, ecology and neuroscience.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Powers's characteristic flowing sentences.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Climate, consciousness, and parenthood.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with science and ecological detail.
- Narrative indirection: 50 out of 100
- Father's perspective limits and reveals.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- The planet, the brain training, Robin carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 40 out of 100
- Powers writes with evident compassion.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Tragedy comes; hope and despair intertwine.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- First-person with embedded stories.
How Bewilderment is regarded
Bewilderment holds a literary regard score of 50 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.