The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín
Published 1999 · 273 pages · 68,250 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Blackwater Lightship to read?
The Blackwater Lightship scores 52 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: 50 out of 100
- Irish vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
- Tóibín's clear prose.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Family, AIDS, reconciliation.
- Information density: 52 out of 100
- Wexford coast.
- Narrative indirection: 52 out of 100
- Third person.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- Lightship, light.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Engaged sympathy.
- Resolution withholding: 52 out of 100
- Family reconciles.
- Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
- Three generations.
How The Blackwater Lightship is regarded
The Blackwater Lightship holds a literary regard score of 61 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.