Singing My Sister Down by Margo Lanagan

Published 2001 · 175 pages · 43,750 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Short Fiction

How hard is Singing My Sister Down to read?

Singing My Sister Down scores 54 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: 50 out of 100
Simple vocabulary.
Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
Lanagan's clear prose.
Abstraction: 58 out of 100
Ritual, death, community.
Information density: 50 out of 100
Sparse detail.
Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
Child narrator, ritual.
Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
Tar, singing, descent.
Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
Child's acceptance.
Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
Ritual completes.
Structural complexity: 48 out of 100
Short story.

How Singing My Sister Down is regarded

Singing My Sister Down holds a literary regard score of 58 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

Margo Lanagan