The Possession by Annie Ernaux
Published 2002 · 17,050 words · about 1 hour at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Memoir & Autobiography
How hard is The Possession to read?
The Possession scores 44 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: 48 out of 100
- Deliberately flat, unliterary vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Short, exact sentences.
- Abstraction: 58 out of 100
- Jealousy examined clinically rather than felt.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Very short and spare.
How The Possession is regarded
The Possession holds a literary regard score of 59 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.
Prizes
- Nobel Prize in Literature 2022, awarded to Annie Ernaux
Where the story of The Possession takes place
- France, early 2000s (2000 to 2002), the main setting