The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

Published 2022 · 352 pages · 115,000 words · about 10 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is The Candy House to read?

The Candy House scores 60 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
Contemporary tech vocabulary.
Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
Egan's varied styles.
Abstraction: 62 out of 100
Memory, technology, self.
Information density: 58 out of 100
Near-future tech.
Narrative indirection: 65 out of 100
Multiple formats.
Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
Candy house, memory.
Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
Tech satire.
Resolution withholding: 58 out of 100
Open connections.
Structural complexity: 68 out of 100
Linked stories, formats.

How The Candy House is regarded

The Candy House holds a literary regard score of 45 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

Jennifer Egan