Exposed by Frank Connolly

How hard is Exposed to read?

Exposed scores 29 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. 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: 30 out of 100

Connolly writes as a newspaper investigator for general readers, so the prose stays plain and direct. Legal and political terms such as tribunals of inquiry appear, but nothing approaches the ornate register of Lolita or The Great Gatsby.

Sentence structure: 30 out of 100

Journalistic sentences are clear and declarative, built to carry facts and allegations without strain. The syntax sits near the accessible prose of 1984.

Abstraction: 32 out of 100

The book rests on named politicians, specific payments, tribunal findings and ghost estates, which are concrete subjects. Its argument linking corruption to the housing crisis adds some abstraction, comparable to the concrete examples in Atomic Habits.

Information density: 52 out of 100

Fifteen years of scandals, many names, tribunals and dates make for a heavy load of facts. The reporting format keeps each case digestible, so density lands a little above Atomic Habits.

Argumentative complexity: 30 out of 100

The central claim is that corruption has continued across governments and fed the housing crisis. It is carried by case-by-case evidence rather than layered dialectic, closer to Slouching Towards Bethlehem than to The Second Sex.

Prerequisite knowledge: 30 out of 100

Readers benefit from knowing Irish politics, figures such as Haughey, Ahern and Lowry, and the tribunal era. The book is written for a general audience, so little specialist theory is assumed.

Terminological opacity: 18 out of 100

Terms are drawn from law, planning and policing and are explained in context. Nothing resembles the invented vocabulary of theoretical works.

Rhetorical indirection: 14 out of 100

The publisher describes it as sharp and unflinching, an exposé that states its charges openly. It argues plainly, much like On Writing in directness.

Systemic scope: 35 out of 100

The book joins politics, policing, business, planning and housing policy into one account of Irish governance. That stays within a single national frame, wider than On Writing but narrower than Orientalism.

How Exposed is regarded

Exposed holds a literary regard score of 20 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.

About the author

Frank Connolly