Small World by David Lodge
Published 1984 · 352 pages · 88,000 words · about 10 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Small World to read?
Small World scores 55 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
- Academic vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
- Lodge's comic prose.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Academia, romance.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Conference circuit.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Multiple storylines.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- Grail quest parody.
- Ironic distance: 62 out of 100
- Academic satire.
- Resolution withholding: 52 out of 100
- Comic resolution.
- Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
- Multiple plots, romance parody.
How Small World is regarded
Small World holds a literary regard score of 61 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.