Surplus of Light by Chase Connor
Published 2018 · 45,000 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Coming-of-Age, LGBTQ+ Fiction, Romance
How hard is Surplus of Light to read?
Surplus of Light scores 25 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: 26 out of 100
- A short independently published coming-of-age novel aimed at a broad contemporary audience, so the vocabulary is almost certainly plain and everyday. It sits near the simple contemporary fiction of Beach Read.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- The genre and the 171-page length point to direct contemporary sentences without heavy subordination. Compare the accessible syntax of Beach Read.
- Abstraction: 28 out of 100
- The blurb centres on a concrete friendship between Mike and an artistic boy over one summer. That is personal experience told directly, close to It Ends with Us.
- Information density: 22 out of 100
- At 171 pages with a single central relationship, the book offers a light, comfortable load of incident and ideas, like Beach Read.
- Narrative indirection: 27 out of 100
- Readers liken it to summery teen films, which suggests straightforward storytelling where feelings are shown plainly. Little inference is demanded, much as in Beach Read.
- Symbolic density: 28 out of 100
- The title's light imagery and the long summer days hint at some motif, but the evidence shows a genre romance with a minimal symbolic layer, comparable to Beach Read.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- The blurb and reader comparisons suggest an earnest, sincere emotional register, in the direction of It Ends with Us.
- Resolution withholding: 28 out of 100
- Coming-of-age romance conventions suggest an emotional resolution of the central friendship rather than open ambiguity, like the genre closure of Beach Read.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- A short novel following one summer suggests a linear structure, comparable to the linear romance of Beach Read.
How Surplus of Light is regarded
Surplus of Light holds a literary regard score of 12 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.