The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda
Published 1962 · 55,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Fiction, Literary Fiction, War Fiction
How hard is The Time of the Doves to read?
The Time of the Doves scores 33 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
- Simple, colloquial vocabulary reflecting Natàlia's working-class perspective. The language is deliberately plain, close to spoken Catalan rendered in translation.
- Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
- Long, flowing sentences that mimic oral storytelling — one thought tumbling into the next without formal punctuation. The stream-of-consciousness style is intuitive rather than literary.
- Abstraction: 25 out of 100
- Almost entirely concrete — domestic routines, physical sensations, the daily business of survival. Natàlia does not abstract from her experience.
- Information density: 40 out of 100
- The novel covers decades of a life in a relatively short space. Each scene and detail is carefully chosen to carry maximum emotional and historical weight.
- Narrative indirection: 30 out of 100
- Natàlia tells her story directly, but her limited perspective means the reader often understands more than she does about the political and historical forces shaping her life.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The doves are a powerful central symbol — of domesticity, entrapment, Natàlia's identity, and ultimately her liberation. The Plaça del Diamant itself carries symbolic weight.
- Ironic distance: 25 out of 100
- Natàlia's voice is sincere and unironic. The irony, when it exists, comes from the gap between her limited understanding and the reader's broader knowledge of events.
- Resolution withholding: 30 out of 100
- The novel reaches a clear resolution — Natàlia survives, remarries, and finds stability — though the emotional damage is never fully repaired.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- A linear first-person narrative divided into two parts (before and after the war). The structure is simple and reflects Natàlia's straightforward mode of perception.
How The Time of the Doves is regarded
The Time of the Doves holds a literary regard score of 81 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.