The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

Published 1982 · 440 pages · 110,000 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is The Chaneysville Incident to read?

The Chaneysville Incident scores 57 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
African-American historical.
Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
Bradley's varied style.
Abstraction: 62 out of 100
History, race, truth.
Information density: 60 out of 100
Underground Railroad.
Narrative indirection: 58 out of 100
Multiple timelines.
Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
Graves, history.
Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
Engaged discovery.
Resolution withholding: 58 out of 100
Truth assembled.
Structural complexity: 58 out of 100
Historical mystery.

How The Chaneysville Incident is regarded

The Chaneysville Incident holds a literary regard score of 60 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

David Bradley