The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Published 2000 · 8,800 words · about 1 hour at an average pace
How hard is The Red Tree to read?
The Red Tree scores 64 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
- Plain vocabulary with folklore and academic inserts.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Clear sentences in a deteriorating journal.
- Abstraction: 58 out of 100
- Concrete house with an unstable reality.
- Information density: 58 out of 100
- Dense with embedded documents.
- Narrative indirection: 78 out of 100
- A writer whose manuscript may be entirely delusional.
- Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
- The tree and the manuscript carry the meaning.
- Ironic distance: 48 out of 100
- Distance between her account and any verifiable event.
- Resolution withholding: 78 out of 100
- Nothing is confirmed.
- Structural complexity: 68 out of 100
- A journal with an editor's preface and inserted texts.
How The Red Tree is regarded
The Red Tree 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.