Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara

Published 1956 · 464 pages · 104,500 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is Ten North Frederick to read?

Ten North Frederick scores 53 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: 52 out of 100
American mid-century.
Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
O'Hara's clear prose.
Abstraction: 55 out of 100
Ambition, disappointment.
Information density: 55 out of 100
Pennsylvania life.
Narrative indirection: 52 out of 100
Third person.
Symbolic density: 52 out of 100
Address, status.
Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
Social observation.
Resolution withholding: 52 out of 100
Life revealed.
Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
Biographical arc.

How Ten North Frederick is regarded

Ten North Frederick holds a literary regard score of 45 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

John O'Hara