The Lilies of the Field
Published 1962 · 127 pages · 34,925 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Satire & Humor
How hard is The Lilies of the Field to read?
The Lilies of the Field scores 25 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. 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: 26 out of 100
- Barrett writes plain, brisk prose with occasional German phrases and builder's terms. It sits close to the simple contemporary language of Beach Read, a notch more formal.
- Sentence structure: 24 out of 100
- Sentences are short and declarative, and the dialogue is straightforward. The comic exchanges with the nuns' halting English add small bumps but no real difficulty.
- Abstraction: 32 out of 100
- The story is concrete: bricks, roofs, meals, wages. The faith-versus-work question underlies it, much as in Asterix the Gaul's comic adventure, but with a gentle moral edge.
- Information density: 22 out of 100
- At under 35,000 words with a single plotline, the book moves lightly and gives few new concepts per page. It sits near the Diary of a Young Girl in lightness.
- Narrative indirection: 25 out of 100
- Barrett tells events directly and leaves little to infer. The racial and religious undertones in Homer's dealings with the nuns are visible on the surface.
- Symbolic density: 35 out of 100
- The chapel and the biblical title carry clear, signposted meaning. There is little beyond them, so the symbolism is lighter than in 1984.
- Ironic distance: 32 out of 100
- Humor arises from the contest between Homer's pride and Mother Maria Marthe's pious scheming. The tone is warm and mostly sincere, with gentle comic irony.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- The chapel gets built and the central question is settled, with an emotional close. Little remains open, similar to the genre-expected endings of Beach Read.
- Structural complexity: 14 out of 100
- The plot is linear and follows one man through a single project, like the straightforward arc of Beach Read.
How The Lilies of the Field is regarded
The Lilies of the Field holds a literary regard score of 36 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.