Big If by Mark Costello
Published 2002 · 596 pages · 88,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Big If to read?
Big If 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: 40 out of 100
- Political and Secret Service vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Costello's varied, precise sentences.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Politics, family, and contingency.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with campaign and family detail.
- Narrative indirection: 50 out of 100
- Multiple perspectives on campaign.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The campaign, contingency, family carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Costello maintains knowing distance.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Contingency; anything could happen.
- Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
- Multiple storylines converging.
How Big If is regarded
Big If holds a literary regard score of 52 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.