The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton
Published 1999 · 416 pages · 114,400 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction
How hard is The Time It Never Rained to read?
The Time It Never Rained scores 34 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. 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: 30 out of 100
- A Western about ranchers and a long drought suggests plain, regional prose with ranching terms. It sits near the accessible contemporary fiction of Beach Read, with somewhat more period and regional flavor.
- Sentence structure: 32 out of 100
- Western realism of this kind usually runs on direct, declarative sentences. Its syntax is close to the clear style of 1984, with little nesting.
- Abstraction: 38 out of 100
- The story rests on concrete matters: a rancher, his land, the drought and the government aid he refuses. Ideas about pride and change in the West arrive through events, much as in To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Information density: 38 out of 100
- A seven-year drought, ranching practice and the lives of ranchers, farmers and Mexican-descended workers give the book steady but manageable detail. It sits between Beach Read and The Great Gatsby in density.
- Narrative indirection: 35 out of 100
- Charlie Flagg's paternalism toward Lupe Flores and his son Manuel is shown rather than named, so readers must notice what he fails to see. Otherwise the narration is plain, closer to 1984 than to The Great Gatsby.
- Symbolic density: 42 out of 100
- A cairn on Flagg's land marking a Comanche warrior's grave parallels his own last stand, and the drought carries weight beyond weather. These motifs are clear, closer to the signposted symbols of 1984 than to the web of Gatsby.
- Ironic distance: 35 out of 100
- Kelton lets Flagg's unthinking paternalism stand without comment, which opens a gap between the hero's view and the reader's. The tone stays largely earnest, nearer to Flights than to Lolita.
- Resolution withholding: 32 out of 100
- A rancher's fight against drought and government aid suggests a story that reaches a clear outcome, though the cost of his stand may stay open. It sits closer to Beloved than to The Great Gatsby.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- A seven-year drought in a single setting implies a mostly chronological narrative centered on Flagg. Its structure resembles the clear divisions of 1984.
How The Time It Never Rained is regarded
The Time It Never Rained holds a literary regard score of 50 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.