The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Published 2012 · 129 pages · 35,662 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

How hard is The Buddha in the Attic to read?

The Buddha in the Attic scores 56 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: 50 out of 100
Simple, collective.
Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
Otsuka's choral prose.
Abstraction: 58 out of 100
Immigration, identity.
Information density: 55 out of 100
Japanese immigration.
Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
Collective "we" voice.
Symbolic density: 58 out of 100
Buddha, attic.
Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
Collective witness.
Resolution withholding: 58 out of 100
Internment coming.
Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
Choral structure.

How The Buddha in the Attic is regarded

The Buddha in the Attic holds a literary regard score of 70 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

Julie Otsuka