Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Published 2005 · 451 pages · 139,638 words · about 13 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Beyond Black to read?
Beyond Black scores 77 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very 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: 70 out of 100
- Mantel's precise vocabulary with supernatural elements.
- Sentence structure: 75 out of 100
- Dense, controlled sentences.
- Abstraction: 78 out of 100
- Past trauma and supernatural explored.
- Information density: 75 out of 100
- Dense with psychological and suburban detail.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Alison's past revealed fragmentarily.
- Symbolic density: 70 out of 100
- The dead, the suburbs, trauma carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 82 out of 100
- Mantel's dark humor pervades.
- Resolution withholding: 85 out of 100
- Past remains; haunting continues.
- Structural complexity: 75 out of 100
- Present interspersed with traumatic past.
How Beyond Black is regarded
Beyond Black 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.