Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney
Published 2017 · 302 pages · 75,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Mystery & Crime, Thriller & Suspense
How hard is Sometimes I Lie to read?
Sometimes I Lie scores 26 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: 20 out of 100
- Simple, domestic vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 20 out of 100
- Abstraction: 15 out of 100
- Concrete thriller. No intellectual abstraction.
- Information density: 28 out of 100
- Three timelines create moderate density.
- Narrative indirection: 38 out of 100
- Three contradictory timelines. Narrator explicitly warns she lies.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The coma as metaphor for willful blindness.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- The title warns the reader. The narrator lies anyway.
- Resolution withholding: 42 out of 100
- The entire novel is a concealment. The twist restructures everything.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- Three interlocking timelines designed to deceive.
How Sometimes I Lie is regarded
Sometimes I Lie holds a literary regard score of 21 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.