How long does it take to read Wise Blood?
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor takes about 4 hours 15 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 15 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1952. 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 18 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath Lily. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Motes founds the Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with "wise blood," who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Motes's existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.
Subjects: religion, Religious Psychology, Faith, Religious adherents, Fiction, Fiction, humorous
More by Flannery O'Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to Find 4.6 h 
The Dark Descent 13.8 h 
The Complete Stories 10.6 h 
The United States in Literature [with Three Long Stories] -- Seventh Edition 15.0 h 
Prentice Hall Literature--Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes--The American Experience 22.5 h 
Everything That Rises Must Converge 4.9 h 
