Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
Published 1996 · 68,750 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Horror, LGBTQ+ Fiction
How hard is Exquisite Corpse to read?
Exquisite Corpse scores 56 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: 55 out of 100
- Lush, deliberately overripe vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Long, ornate sentences.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Concrete atrocity in a heightened register.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Moderate.
- Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
- Two killers narrating themselves as romantics.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- Decay and the house carry the theme.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Distance between the lyricism and the acts.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- The ending is deliberately unredemptive.
- Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
- Alternating first persons.
How Exquisite Corpse is regarded
Exquisite Corpse holds a literary regard score of 36 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.