How long does it take to read Property?
Property by Valerie Martin takes about 3 hours 42 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 42 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2002. 202 pages, about 55,550 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 10 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 42 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 19 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Valerie Martin’s Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery’s venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress. Exploring the permutations of Manon’s own obsession with Sarah against the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and powerful.
Subjects: Mistresses, Plantation owners' spouses, Slavery, Women slaves, Plantation life, Triangles (Interpersonal relations)
