Valentino and Sagittarius by Natalia Ginzburg
Published 1988 · 176 pages · 42,625 words · about 3 hours at an average pace
How hard is Valentino and Sagittarius to read?
Valentino and Sagittarius scores 51 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
- Deliberately plain, exact vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
- Short, unadorned sentences.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Concrete family life, coolly observed.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Very compressed; two short novellas.
- Narrative indirection: 58 out of 100
- Narrators who report their families without understanding them.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- Restrained.
- Ironic distance: 68 out of 100
- The comedy and the cruelty come from what the narrator does not see.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Both novellas end abruptly and without comfort.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- Linear.
How Valentino and Sagittarius is regarded
Valentino and Sagittarius holds a literary regard score of 58 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.