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How long does it take to read God Help the Child?

Toni Morrison

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison takes about 3 hours 31 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 3 hours 31 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1999. 192 pages, about 52,800 words.

8 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 5 hours 52 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 3 hours 31 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 2 hours 12 minutes

The page count is the median across 24 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child--the first novel by Toni Morrison to be set in our current moment--weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride's mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that "what you do to children matters. And they might never forget."

Subjects: Mothers and daughters, fiction, African americans, fiction, Fiction, family life, African Americans, Fiction, Mothers and daughters

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