The Eye of the Storm by Patrick White
Published 1973 · 588 pages · 205,334 words · about 15 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Eye of the Storm to read?
The Eye of the Storm scores 62 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: 58 out of 100
- White writes in dense, baroque prose that captures consciousness with almost painful precision. The vocabulary is demanding, requiring readers to engage with his characteristic elaboration.
- Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
- Sentences are often long and complex, building through the accumulation of sensory detail and psychological observation. White's prose has the difficulty of high modernism, demanding slow, careful reading.
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- The novel explores death, family, and the nature of consciousness approaching its end. These themes are White's primary subjects, approached through Elizabeth Hunter's final days.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Sydney society, the textures of wealth, and the details of a dying woman's memories layer through the narrative. White creates density through exhaustive psychological and sensory observation.
- Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
- Multiple perspectives reveal different relationships to Elizabeth Hunter's dying. The reader must navigate between her consciousness and her children's resentments and needs.
- Symbolic density: 68 out of 100
- The eye of the storm becomes symbolic of the stillness Elizabeth found in her past, and the peace she seeks in death. Her children become symbolic of how the dying cannot give the living what they need.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- White maintains complex ironic distance from all his characters, seeing through their pretensions while taking their suffering seriously. The novel is satirical and compassionate simultaneously.
- Resolution withholding: 58 out of 100
- Elizabeth dies, but her children's relationships to her remain unresolved. White offers the fact of death without the comfort of reconciliation.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- The novel moves between characters' consciousnesses around the dying woman. The structure is demanding, requiring readers to track multiple streams of memory and desire.
How The Eye of the Storm is regarded
The Eye of the Storm holds a literary regard score of 76 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.