Blue Angel by Francine Prose
Published 2000 · 384 pages · 86,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Satire & Humor
How hard is Blue Angel to read?
Blue Angel scores 39 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: 35 out of 100
- Clear, satirical prose.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Straightforward sentences with ironic edge.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Academic politics and desire.
- Information density: 35 out of 100
- Fast-moving campus satire.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Plot follows predictable affair trajectory.
- Symbolic density: 35 out of 100
- Limited symbolism; realistic mode.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- Sharp satirical distance from characters.
- Resolution withholding: 35 out of 100
- Consequences unfold clearly.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Conventional linear narrative.
How Blue Angel is regarded
Blue Angel holds a literary regard score of 61 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.