The Pisces by Melissa Broder
Published 2018 · 79,200 words · about 6 hours at an average pace
How hard is The Pisces to read?
The Pisces scores 56 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: 48 out of 100
- Plain, blunt, contemporary vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
- Short, fast sentences.
- Abstraction: 52 out of 100
- Concrete, though the premise is mythic.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Light.
- Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
- A narrator whose academic self-analysis conceals her.
- Symbolic density: 58 out of 100
- The merman and the ocean are sustained figures.
- Ironic distance: 68 out of 100
- Sustained comic irony about her own thesis.
- Resolution withholding: 58 out of 100
- The ending withholds judgement.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Linear.
How The Pisces is regarded
The Pisces 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.