The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
Published 2014 · 384 pages · 96,000 words · about 11 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Blazing World to read?
The Blazing World scores 61 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: 55 out of 100
- Art world vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Hustvedt's varied style.
- Abstraction: 65 out of 100
- Art, gender, perception.
- Information density: 58 out of 100
- Art world detail.
- Narrative indirection: 65 out of 100
- Multiple documents.
- Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
- Masks, blazing.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- Art world critique.
- Resolution withholding: 62 out of 100
- Truth uncertain.
- Structural complexity: 65 out of 100
- Documentary collage.
How The Blazing World is regarded
The Blazing World holds a literary regard score of 58 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.