How long does it take to read Secrets of the Flesh?
Judith Thurman
Secrets of the Flesh by Judith Thurman takes about 10 hours 53 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 10 hours 53 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1999. 594 pages, about 163,350 words.
22 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 18 hours 9 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 53 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 48 minutes |
The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"In 1900, a provincial beauty best known as the child bride of a famous Parisian rake captivated the Belle Epoque by writing a story that invented the modern teenage girl. It was the first in a series of wildly popular but also critically acclaimed novels that, combined with a flamboyant career on the stage, made this former country girl the first authentic superstar of the century."--BOOK JACKET. "But for all her celebrity as one of France's greatest and most notorious novelists and personalities, Sidonic-Gabrielle Colette was a profoundly reticent and self-suspicious creature who fiercely resists being known."--BOOK JACKET. "Having spent her village childhood in the shadow of a queenly, possessive mother who taught her the value of resilience, Colette would go on to embody the image of the modern woman. At twenty, she marries the canny but unscrupulous Willy, who not only takes the credit - and the royalties - for her best-selling Claudine novels, but also keeps her enthralled in more primal ways. In 1908, she divorces her Pygmalion and pursues the most public of her many affairs with women. At forty, she gives birth to her only and much-neglected child. Her second marriage, to her daughter's father - a brilliant, predatory, patrician journalist and politician - falters, then fails. At forty-seven, she seduces her adolescent stepson. At menopause, she rediscovers her mother. At fifty-two, she embarks upon a torrid adventure with a much younger man that blooms - against all expectations - into the serene and enduring mutual devotion she has yearned for but has never known. This third husband, Maurice Goudeket, also becomes the source of her worst anguish when he is arrested by the Gestapo during the Occupation."--BOOK JACKET. "As Colette redefines the conventions of loving and aging, she continues to live and write with Olympian vitality. Her principal subject is the bonds of love; her one true faith the consoling power of sensual pleasure. She opens a beauty…
Subjects: Authors, French, French Authors, Biography, French Women authors
