The Train Was on Time by Heinrich Böll
Published 1949 · 200 pages · 27,500 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, War Fiction
How hard is The Train Was on Time to read?
The Train Was on Time scores 58 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: 55 out of 100
- German in translation.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Boll stream style.
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- Death, war, fate.
- Information density: 52 out of 100
- WWII train journey.
- Narrative indirection: 60 out of 100
- Third person, internal.
- Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
- Train, time, death.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Tragic inevitability.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Foretold death.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- Linear journey.
How The Train Was on Time is regarded
The Train Was on Time holds a literary regard score of 59 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.