Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones
Published 2005 · 30,800 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · LGBTQ+ Fiction, Coming-of-Age, Literary Fiction
How hard is Box Hill to read?
Box Hill 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: 50 out of 100
- Plain, precise vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
- Short, controlled sentences.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Concrete submission, coolly narrated.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Light; a novella.
- Narrative indirection: 72 out of 100
- A narrator who reports his own subjection without ever examining it.
- Symbolic density: 52 out of 100
- The bike and the flat carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 65 out of 100
- The entire book runs on what Colin cannot see about himself.
- Resolution withholding: 62 out of 100
- The relationship ends without explanation.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- A single retrospective monologue.
How Box Hill is regarded
Box Hill holds a literary regard score of 38 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.
Where the story of Box Hill takes place
- Surrey, England, 1970s (1975 to 1977), the main setting