The Suicides by Antonio di Benedetto
Published 2025 · 176 pages · 48,400 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Mystery & Crime, Modernist & Experimental Fiction
How hard is The Suicides to read?
The Suicides 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: 45 out of 100
- A journalist's plain register and a spare translation suggest vocabulary closer to Pedro Paramo's compression than to Ulysses. Nothing in the evidence points to specialised or archaic diction.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Short-novel form and a reporter's prose suggest controlled, economical sentences, like the measured syntax of The Remains of the Day. Nothing signals heavy subordination.
- Abstraction: 65 out of 100
- The inquiry widens from three cases into an exploration of suicide itself, which moves a concrete investigation toward existential questions. It sits near Pedro Paramo's mix of concrete place and abstract afterlife.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- At roughly 48,000 words with a single investigative thread, the book is compact and not encyclopedic. Its density is closer to The Great Gatsby's compression than to a panoramic novel.
- Narrative indirection: 68 out of 100
- A reporter with only photographs of the dead faces to go on implies a story built on gaps and inference. The reader must read meaning into what the investigation cannot establish.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- The photographed faces and the widening inquiry suggest motifs beyond the literal, but the evidence does not show an allegorical system. It sits at moderate density, below The Great Gatsby.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- The portrayal of misanthropic yet vulnerable men on society's margins suggests a detached, sceptical narrative stance. That distance is not as sharp as Lolita's unreliable charm.
- Resolution withholding: 68 out of 100
- An investigation into suicide that grows into an exploration of the subject itself suggests questions that stay open instead of a solved case. It leans toward an unresolved ending, in the manner of Austerlitz's incomplete search.
- Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
- The widening inquiry from three unconnected cases implies some episodic structure, but the short length suggests a manageable form. It is simpler than The Master and Margarita's interwoven narratives.
How The Suicides is regarded
The Suicides 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.