The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Published 2021 · 352 pages · 88,000 words · about 10 hours at an average pace · History, Literary Fiction
How hard is The Vanishing Half to read?
The Vanishing Half scores 57 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
- Contemporary vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Clear prose.
- Abstraction: 62 out of 100
- Race, identity, passing.
- Information density: 58 out of 100
- 20th century America.
- Narrative indirection: 58 out of 100
- Third person.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- Twins, color, halves.
- Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
- Engaged observation.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Reunion occurs.
- Structural complexity: 58 out of 100
- Generations, locations.
How The Vanishing Half is regarded
The Vanishing Half holds a literary regard score of 51 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.