A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Published 1943 · 160,000 words · about 11 hours at an average pace · Coming-of-Age, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
How hard is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to read?
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn scores 17 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: 20 out of 100
- Plain, accessible American English. Some period-specific Brooklyn slang and immigrant vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 22 out of 100
- Abstraction: 15 out of 100
- Entirely concrete. Poverty and aspiration rendered through meals, school days, and family scenes.
- Information density: 35 out of 100
- Leisurely pacing. Rich social detail about early-20th-century Brooklyn accumulates over a long novel.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Chronological, episodic structure. No tricks, no withheld information.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- The tree of heaven is the governing metaphor: survival through concrete, beauty through hardship.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Warm, empathetic narration. Francie's youthful perspective is idealistic but never ironic.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Episodic structure without a central mystery. Johnny's decline is foreshadowed early.
- Structural complexity: 15 out of 100
- Linear, episodic, covering six years. Simple but long.
How A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is regarded
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn holds a literary regard score of 57 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.