How long does it take to read Union Street?
Union Street by Pat Barker takes about 4 hours 52 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 52 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1982. 265 pages, about 72,875 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 6 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 52 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 2 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Vivid, bawdy and bitter' (The Times), Pat Barker's first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh challeges of poverty and survival in a precarious world. There's Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married, and already pregnant; Old Alice, welcoming her impending death; Muriel helplessly watching the decline of her stoical husband. And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.
Subjects: Fiction, general