Circles of Deceit by Nina Bawden
Published 1987 · 189 pages · 47,250 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Circles of Deceit to read?
Circles of Deceit scores 45 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
- Bawden writes in clear, intelligent English suited to her middle-class characters. The vocabulary is accessible without being simple.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Well-crafted sentences that capture interior states with precision. The prose is psychologically acute but not syntactically demanding.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Grounded in daily life—the house, the restoration work, the affair. Larger questions about truth and self-deception emerge through concrete situations.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- The narrative builds steadily, layering revelations. You track relationships and deceptions as they accumulate.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- Characters deceive themselves and others; you must read between what they say and what they mean.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- The restoration of old murals becomes symbolic of uncovering buried truths. Bawden weaves her themes through the action.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Bawden observes her characters with knowing irony. She sees their self-justifications for what they are.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- The novel builds toward confrontation and consequence. Resolution comes, though life remains complicated.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- A straightforward narrative that unfolds chronologically. The complexity is psychological rather than structural.
How Circles of Deceit is regarded
Circles of Deceit holds a literary regard score of 56 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.