Black Dogs by Ian McEwan
Published 1992 · 176 pages · 44,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Black Dogs to read?
Black Dogs scores 53 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
- McEwan's precise vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Controlled, thoughtful sentences.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- History, evil, and meaning explored.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with European history.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Multiple time periods; meaning assembled.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- The black dogs, history, evil carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- McEwan maintains intellectual distance.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Evil exists; meaning uncertain.
- Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
- Frame narrative with embedded stories.
How Black Dogs is regarded
Black Dogs holds a literary regard score of 62 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.