The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Published 2007 · 45,000 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Coming-of-Age, Literary Fiction
How hard is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian to read?
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian scores 22 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: 18 out of 100
- Accessible YA vocabulary. Conversational, adolescent voice.
- Sentence structure: 18 out of 100
- Abstraction: 20 out of 100
- Concrete, experiential. Big ideas delivered through anecdote and cartoon.
- Information density: 32 out of 100
- Fast, light reading. Emotional density builds through accumulation of loss.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Direct first-person chronological narration. The cartoons provide a parallel commentary.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- Basketball, the reservation boundary, and the cartoons carry symbolic weight.
- Ironic distance: 35 out of 100
- Junior's humor is a shield. Self-deprecation masks and reveals pain simultaneously.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- Coming-of-age arc is conventional. The losses arrive without warning.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- Linear chronological narrative with interspersed cartoons.
How The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is regarded
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian 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.