The New Life: A Novel by Tom Crewe
Published 2024 · 114,400 words · about 8 hours at an average pace
How hard is The New Life: A Novel to read?
The New Life: A Novel scores 53 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
- Period-appropriate and precise.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- Measured, formal sentences suited to the 1890s setting.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Concrete lives carrying an argument about sexual politics.
- Information density: 58 out of 100
- Considerable period and legal detail.
- Narrative indirection: 48 out of 100
- Two parallel households, neither fully known to the other.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The book-within-the-book and the trial carry sustained weight.
- Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
- Steady distance between the characters' idealism and their conduct.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- The ending offers no settlement for either couple.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- Two braided strands converging on a trial.
How The New Life: A Novel is regarded
The New Life: A Novel 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.