The Doloriad by Missouri Williams
Published 2022 · 240 pages · 66,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Science Fiction, Horror
How hard is The Doloriad to read?
The Doloriad scores 66 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: 66 out of 100
- Reviewers describe elaborate, dense prose with a Faulknerian register, which points to a rich literary vocabulary. It likely sits below the archaic density of Moby-Dick and near Midnight's Children.
- Sentence structure: 76 out of 100
- Long blocks of elaborate stream-of-consciousness prose suggest extended, winding sentences in the vein of Faulkner. That puts it near The Sound and the Fury, though shorter in total length.
- Abstraction: 62 out of 100
- The story is grounded in bodies, toxic soil and scavenging, but a post-cataclysm family allegory of persistence carries philosophical weight. It sits near Pedro Paramo, concrete setting with abstract implication.
- Information density: 62 out of 100
- At 66,000 words of dense, unbroken prose moving between many relatives' perspectives, it asks for steady attention. It is less encyclopedic than 2666 but more compressed than The Great Gatsby.
- Narrative indirection: 76 out of 100
- The cataclysm goes unexplained and the narration slides between characters' minds, so readers assemble the world themselves. This resembles the fragmented perspectives of The Sound and the Fury.
- Symbolic density: 66 out of 100
- A degenerating family working poisoned earth reads as an allegory of persistence and inheritance. Reviewers' talk of a macabre epic suggests a strong symbolic layer, though less pervasive than in Moby-Dick.
- Ironic distance: 58 out of 100
- Reviewers note dark humour amid violence, which implies a gap between the grim events and the narration's tone. It is less pronounced than the satire in Lolita.
- Resolution withholding: 66 out of 100
- An unexplained cataclysm and a theme of perversion of persistence suggest the book withholds clear answers. Its ambiguity likely falls between The Great Gatsby and Pedro Paramo.
- Structural complexity: 62 out of 100
- Shifting perspectives among many family members with stream-of-consciousness narration create structural demands. It is less fragmented than Flights but more complex than a linear narrative.
How The Doloriad is regarded
The Doloriad holds a literary regard score of 31 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.