How long does it take to read The Desert of the Heart?
The Desert of the Heart by Jane Rule takes about 4 hours 15 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 15 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1964. 232 pages, about 63,800 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 5 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 15 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 40 minutes |
The page count is the median across 29 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Possibly Jane Rule's best known novel, The Desert of the Heart is the story of a free spirited woman falling for a repressed older woman. Evelyn Hall is taking respite at a ranch for women as she seeks a divorce after years of marriage. Written in 1964, it serves as a fascinating snapshot into the lives and regulations of women seeking their freedom. Dr. Hall stays at a Nevada ranch where she meets, and falls for, Ann Child ("Evelyn looked at Ann, the child she had always wanted, the friend she once had, the lover she never considered..."). Evelyn Hall has a hard time fitting in, and Jane Rule cleverly captures the feeling of a fish out of water time after time. "Whenever there were generalizations about women, Evelyn weighed herself against them and found herself insubstantial," writes Rule, capturing the alienation Evelyn has even from her own gender. Rule walk many thin lines in the book, whether it's about ownership, freedom, convention or eroticism. "Ann turned, the longing of her body straining against the last reluctance of her mind, and she felt Evelyn's tentative, almost causal beginning gradually give way to an authority of love." Remember that this was written in 1964. Desert of the Heart stands as a tour de force in lesbian culture, still as warm and richly engaging today as it was when it was first written.
Subjects: Divorced women, Coming out (Sexual orientation), Fiction, Lesbians, Identity, Interpersonal relations
