How long is it?
320 pages in the Vintage Books 1998 paperback edition.
Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction
A Death in the Family
CanonicalPulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1958Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 48 / 100Moderate
- Length
- 320 pagesVintage Books · 1998
- Reading time
- 6 h 30 minat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 5 / 5
About 6 h 30 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 13 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
In Knoxville, Tennessee, Jay Follet takes his six-year-old son Rufus to the movies, an ordinary outing before a call about Jay's father's health draws him away from home. When Jay dies in a car accident on the return journey, his wife Mary turns to prayer, relatives gather with conflicting religious convictions, and Rufus struggles to understand what the adults are telling him.
Reader notes
Lyrical and intimate, the novel shifts among family members' thoughts and breaks its main sequence with scenes from earlier years. The pace is slow: waiting, conversations and small household routines carry much of the story as the family begins to live with sudden loss.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Descriptive · Lyrical · Stream of consciousness
- Tone
- Intimate · Melancholic · Reflective
- Structure
- Nonlinear
- Driven by
- Character · Relationships · Voice
- Point of view
- Multiple viewpoints
- Setting
- Knoxville, Tennessee
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 4 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 3 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Coming of age
- Family
- Grief
- Memory
- Mortality
- Religion and faith
Content notes
- Violence
- None
- Sexual content
- None
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Mild
- Abuse
- Mild
- Self-harm or suicide
- Mild
Standing and awards
Canonical
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1958
- National Book Award finalist, 1958
- Library of America
- Penguin Classics
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Vintage Books · 1998 · Paperback. ISBN 9780375701238.
How long does it take to read A Death in the Family?
About 6 hours 30 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 320-page Vintage Books edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
James Agee
James Agee (1909–1955) was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter, and film critic whose work combined close observation with unease about the writer’s authority. In the 1940s, he became one of the country’s most influential film critics through his work for Time. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men grew from a magazine assignment on three Southern tenant-farming families and paired his prose with Walker Evans’s photographs. Agee documented their poverty while questioning how an outsider could represent their lives. In A Death in the Family, he brought the same attentiveness to grief, following how a widow, her children, and their relatives experience a shared loss differently. His screenwriting included The African Queen and work on The Night of the Hunter, although the extent of his contribution to the latter remains disputed.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Vintage Books
- Publication year
- 1998
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 320
- ISBN
- 9780375701238
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 1957
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Literary fiction · Psychological fiction
- Editions
- 16
- Languages
- 1 (English)
The catalog does not yet include a matching edition. Details may differ between editions.