That Night by Alice McDermott
Published 1987 · 192 pages · 48,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is That Night to read?
That Night scores 46 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. 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: 38 out of 100
- McDermott writes in precise, evocative prose that captures 1960s Long Island. The vocabulary is accessible, with meaning carried through observation rather than elaborate language.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Sentences are controlled and rhythmic, building atmosphere through accumulation of detail. McDermott's prose is readable, serving the story's emotional weight.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- The novel explores teenage love, violence, and the gap between adolescent intensity and adult memory. These themes emerge from the specific event of that night and its aftermath.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- The suburban neighborhood, the teenagers' world, and the narrator's adult perspective layer through the narrative. McDermott builds density through compressed observation.
- Narrative indirection: 50 out of 100
- The adult narrator looks back at teenage events, but her understanding is shaped by distance and memory. The reader must interpret the gap between then and now.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- That night—when the boys came for Sheryl—becomes symbolic of the violence underlying suburban order. The neighborhood itself becomes symbolic of post-war American dreams.
- Ironic distance: 45 out of 100
- McDermott maintains careful distance from the teenage passion, seeing both its intensity and its consequences. The irony is in how the narrator's understanding has changed.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- The events of that night have consequences, but the larger meaning remains open to interpretation. McDermott provides closure while leaving the narrator still processing.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- The novel moves between the past and the narrator's present perspective, with that night as the central event. The structure is accessible, building to and away from the crisis.
How That Night is regarded
That Night holds a literary regard score of 60 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.