Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
Published 1931 · 600 pages · 167,483 words · about 11 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Years of Grace to read?
Years of Grace scores 42 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. 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: 42 out of 100
- Upper-class Chicago vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
- Clear, period sentences.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Marriage, society, and change.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Dense with Chicago society.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Linear life narrative.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- Years, grace carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 45 out of 100
- Barnes observes with complexity.
- Resolution withholding: 40 out of 100
- Life completes; meaning assessed.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- Life-span narrative.
How Years of Grace is regarded
Years of Grace holds a literary regard score of 28 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.