How long does it take to read At Swim, Two Boys?
Jamie O'Neill
At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill takes about 11 hours 11 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 11 hours 11 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2001. 610 pages, about 167,750 words. Written for young adults.
23 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 18 hours 38 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 11 hours 11 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 59 minutes |
The page count is the median across 8 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Set during the year preceding the Easter Uprising of 1916—Ireland’s brave but fractured revolt against British rule—At Swim, Two Boys is a tender, tragic love story and a brilliant depiction of people caught in the tide of history. Powerful and artful, and ten years in the writing, it is a masterwork from Jamie O’Neill. Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son—revolutionary and blasphemous—of Mr. Mack’s old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, the two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter of 1916, they will swim to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves. All the while Mr. Mack, who has grand plans for a corner shop empire, remains unaware of the depth of the boys’ burgeoning friendship and of the changing landscape of a nation.
Subjects: Teenage boys, Male friendship, Fiction, Gay youth, History, LGBTQ historical fiction
