The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
Published 1999 · 358 pages · 89,500 words · about 10 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction
How hard is The Bonesetter's Daughter to read?
The Bonesetter's Daughter 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
- Chinese-American vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
- Tan's accessible prose.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Memory, mother-daughter.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- China, immigration.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Two timelines.
- Symbolic density: 58 out of 100
- Bones, ink, secrets.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Emotional engagement.
- Resolution withholding: 52 out of 100
- Secrets revealed.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- Dual narrative.
How The Bonesetter's Daughter is regarded
The Bonesetter's Daughter holds a literary regard score of 61 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.