Harrow by Joy Williams

How hard is Harrow to read?

Harrow scores 75 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very 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: 68 out of 100

Williams deploys archaic and specialized words — 'daedal,' 'ingravescent,' 'scrimshawed,' 'chisom,' 'psychomanteum,' 'dakhma,' 'trephined' — alongside dense allusions to Nietzsche, Goya, Conrad, and Kierkegaard that remain unglossed. The register shifts freely between elevated literary diction and flat deadpan dialogue, creating a vocabulary challenge closer to Lolita than to Gravity's Rainbow.

Sentence structure: 58 out of 100

Sentences are idiosyncratic rather than labyrinthine — Williams favors short declarative fragments juxtaposed with aphoristic mid-length clauses, with dialogue that trails into ellipsis. The effect is oblique and stylized without the Jamesian subordination or Faulknerian marathon constructions that would push the score higher. Syntactic difficulty arises from ellipsis and tonal whiplash rather than nested grammar.

Abstraction: 72 out of 100

The novel mingles post-apocalyptic surface with constant philosophical digression — characters lecture on eternal recurrence, the nature of evil, Hindu cosmology, the Desert Fathers, and the purpose of existence mid-conversation. Williams grounds these in concrete detail (dying lake, bowling alley, vivisection lab photographs) but the ratio of abstract meditation to plot is high, closer to Brothers Karamazov than to 2666.

Information density: 62 out of 100

Each page compresses ecological grief, dark comedy, literary allusion, and metaphysical inquiry simultaneously, but Williams writes in spare bursts rather than maximalist accretion. The compression rewards re-reading — the Saturn cake, the harrow symbol, the tortoise shell — but the novel never overwhelms as Ulysses or Gravity's Rainbow do.

Narrative indirection: 82 out of 100

The novel offers no orientation: three books shift without transition between Khristen's post-apocalyptic picaresque, Lola's Institute of elderly eco-saboteurs, Jeffrey's impossible afterlife courtroom, and Nolo's paramedic patrol. Whether Khristen is living or dead, whether Book Three is real or allegorical, is never resolved. Readers must assemble the thematic architecture without authorial guidance, analogous to Pedro Paramo.

Symbolic density: 78 out of 100

The harrow — an agricultural instrument that tears and prepares earth — anchors the novel's central meditation on destruction as precondition for renewal. The dying lake Big Girl, the desert tortoise carrying a painted swastika, the Saturn-as-Time cake, the tricolored heron 144 who escapes and vanishes: every object is a meaning-carrier. The density is sustained but not hermetic — closer to To the Lighthouse than to Finnegans Wake.

Ironic distance: 70 out of 100

Williams maintains implacable deadpan throughout: Jeffrey at age ten presiding over an afterlife court with torts-lawyer gravity; Lola discussing ecological catastrophe over martinis; the Institute's elderly eco-terrorists stalling their eco-sabotage missions indefinitely. The gap between the seriousness of the subject (extinction, environmental collapse) and the comedy of the characters' responses demands constant recalibration from the reader.

Resolution withholding: 85 out of 100

The novel refuses closure at every level: Khristen never learns what her death-vision means or what she is 'supposed' to do; the Institute's mission collapses without resolution; Jeffrey's courtroom sessions continue without verdict; Nolo ends alone in an empty room. The final pages offer no synthesis, no redemption arc, no interpretive key. This places it near Waiting for Godot and 2666 on the resistance-to-closure scale.

Structural complexity: 78 out of 100

Three books operate in radically different registers and apparent time-frames, connected laterally by character cameos (Jeffrey appears in Book Two as a child and Book Three as an ageless judge; Khristen moves through all three) rather than sequential plot. Book Three introduces Nolo as a new POV character who has no clear relationship to the preceding narrative. Whether the books share a continuous world or alternative planes of existence is left for the reader to determine.

How Harrow is regarded

Harrow holds a literary regard score of 66 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

Joy Williams