How long does it take to read A Death in the Family?
A Death in the Family by James Agee takes about 6 hours 13 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 13 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1957. 339 pages, about 93,225 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 22 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 13 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 53 minutes |
The page count is the median across 47 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Forty years after its original publication, James Agee's last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed. On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to tend to his father, whom he believes is dying. The summons turns out to be a false alarm, but on his way back to his family, Jay has a car accident and is killed instantly. Dancing back and forth in time and braiding the viewpoints of Jay's wife, brother, and young son, Rufus, Agee creates an overwhelmingly powerful novel of innocence, tenderness, and loss that should be read aloud for the sheer music of its prose.
Subjects: Fathers and sons, Fiction, Boys, Traffic accident victims, Family relationships, Death
