The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
Published 2009 · 432 pages · 132,995 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
How hard is The Book of Night Women to read?
The Book of Night Women 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: 58 out of 100
- Jamaican patois.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- James's rhythmic prose.
- Abstraction: 58 out of 100
- Slavery, resistance.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Jamaica plantation.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- First person.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- Night, women, fire.
- Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
- Engaged rage.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Rebellion's fate.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- Linear narrative.
How The Book of Night Women is regarded
The Book of Night Women holds a literary regard score of 64 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.