The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton
Published 2014 · 75,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Coming-of-Age, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism
How hard is The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender to read?
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender scores 24 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: 25 out of 100
- Lush, imagistic prose. Accessible but literary. Fairy-tale register with precision.
- Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
- Abstraction: 22 out of 100
- Ideas about love and trauma conveyed through magical imagery rather than exposition.
- Information density: 28 out of 100
- Three generations compressed into a relatively short novel. Rich with incident and image.
- Narrative indirection: 25 out of 100
- Multigenerational backstory before reaching Ava. The wings' meaning deferred throughout.
- Symbolic density: 35 out of 100
- The wings as burden and blessing. Each generation's magic reflects its emotional truth. Rain as atmosphere and metaphor.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Deeply sincere. The magical realism is presented with fairy-tale earnestness.
- Resolution withholding: 22 out of 100
- What do the wings mean? Will Ava escape the danger Nathaniel represents? Questions held through the climax.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Multigenerational narrative building to Ava's story. Three timelines converging.
How The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender is regarded
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender holds a literary regard score of 29 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.