Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

How hard is Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life to read?

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life scores 29 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. 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: 30 out of 100

Miller writes in conversational, radio-trained prose with occasional taxonomic terms like cladistics, explained as they appear. It sits near Beach Read in plainness with a touch more scientific vocabulary.

Sentence structure: 28 out of 100

Sentences are short, direct and rhythmic, built for the ear. Comparable to Beach Read in accessible structure.

Abstraction: 42 out of 100

Philosophical questions about chaos, order and hope ride on concrete stories of fish, earthquakes and a failed hero. Closer to Atomic Habits in grounding abstract ideas with examples.

Information density: 42 out of 100

Biography, taxonomy, eugenics history and memoir share short chapters, but each point arrives clearly. Lighter than Atomic Habits is not quite true; it is similar in information richness.

How Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life is regarded

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life 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 Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life takes place

• USA, 1880s-1931 (1880 to 1931), the main setting
• USA, present day (memoir frame) (2015 to 2021)

About the author

Lulu Miller