August Blue by Deborah Levy
Published 2023 · 57,200 words · about 4 hours at an average pace
How hard is August Blue to read?
August Blue scores 64 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: 55 out of 100
- Precise, cool vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Short, controlled sentences.
- Abstraction: 65 out of 100
- Identity handled almost entirely through figure.
- Information density: 52 out of 100
- Light on event.
- Narrative indirection: 72 out of 100
- A narrator who may be inventing her double.
- Symbolic density: 68 out of 100
- The mechanical horses and the hat carry the argument.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Steady distance between what she reports and what she knows.
- Resolution withholding: 75 out of 100
- The doubling is never explained.
- Structural complexity: 62 out of 100
- Fragmentary, moving between cities without warning.
How August Blue is regarded
August Blue holds a literary regard score of 50 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.