The Big Chapel by Thomas Kilroy

Published 1971 · 254 pages · 63,500 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

How hard is The Big Chapel to read?

The Big Chapel 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
Irish vocabulary.
Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
Kilroy's prose.
Abstraction: 55 out of 100
Religion, community.
Information density: 55 out of 100
Irish parish.
Narrative indirection: 52 out of 100
Third person.
Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
Chapel, faith.
Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
Community observation.
Resolution withholding: 52 out of 100
Conflict resolved.
Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
Community narrative.

How The Big Chapel is regarded

The Big Chapel holds a literary regard score of 55 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

Thomas Kilroy