In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
Published 2020 · 55,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Romance
How hard is In Five Years to read?
In Five Years scores 18 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: 15 out of 100
- Simple, contemporary vocabulary. Legal terms minimal.
- Sentence structure: 18 out of 100
- Abstraction: 15 out of 100
- Concrete domestic scenes. Emotional directness.
- Information density: 28 out of 100
- Light. A slim novel with a single central conceit.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- The novel misdirects the reader about its true subject.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The apartment as identity. Five years as the unknowable future.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Dannie's control-freak personality played for gentle comedy.
- Resolution withholding: 25 out of 100
- The true stakes are hidden until the two-thirds mark.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- Linear with a framing flash-forward. The twist reframes everything.
How In Five Years is regarded
In Five Years holds a literary regard score of 23 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.