What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
Published 1986 · 436 pages · 109,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is What's Bred in the Bone to read?
What's Bred in the Bone scores 61 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: 65 out of 100
- Davies writes in learned, witty prose that incorporates art history, alchemical symbolism, and the vocabulary of different social worlds. The language is demanding, with the narrator's omniscience allowing access to specialized knowledge across domains.
- Sentence structure: 62 out of 100
- Sentences are often elaborate and ironic, building through Davies's characteristic blend of storytelling and philosophical commentary. The prose has the rhythm of someone who enjoys the telling as much as the tale.
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- The novel explores fate, art, and what makes a life through Francis Cornish, whose biography is told by two angels observing from above. From his Catholic Canadian childhood through his career as an art restorer and forger, Francis's life becomes a study in how we become what we were always meant to be.
- Information density: 65 out of 100
- Art history, spycraft, alchemy, and the textures of 20th-century life layer through the narrative. Davies builds his world through accumulated attention to paintings, rituals, and the accidents that shape destiny.
- Narrative indirection: 60 out of 100
- The angelic narrators provide omniscient perspective on Francis's life, revealing what he couldn't know about himself. The reader must track his biography while understanding the larger pattern the angels perceive.
- Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
- The alchemical process becomes symbolic of the soul's transformation. Art forgery becomes symbolic of truth that surpasses authenticity. The daimon becomes symbolic of the self we're born to become.
- Ironic distance: 58 out of 100
- Davies maintains complex ironic distance through the angelic frame, viewing human life with amusement and compassion. The novel is playful about fate while serious about the soul's work.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Francis's life reaches its end; his art lives on. Davies offers the biography that reveals its subject's meaning while leaving the questions of fate and choice open.
- Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
- The angelic frame narrative and the sweeping biography create demanding reading. The novel requires tracking Francis's life while attending to the symbolic architecture Davies constructs around it.
How What's Bred in the Bone is regarded
What's Bred in the Bone holds a literary regard score of 62 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.