How long is it?
288 pages in the Fawcett 1986 mass market paperback edition.
Fiction · Short Stories · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction
Elbow Room
CanonicalPulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1978Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 50 / 100Moderate
- Length
- 288 pagesFawcett · 1986
- Reading time
- 5 h 45 minat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Variable
- Emotional intensity
- 3 / 5
About 5 h 45 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 12 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Black and white Americans negotiate work, love and other people's judgments in this collection of literary short stories. A man remembers his first schoolboy love; a lawyer and his client struggle to understand each other; a woman in a doctor's waiting room faces a stranger's questions about her scar. In the title story, a narrator recounts an interracial couple's relationship while questioning his own telling.
Reader notes
The tone includes warmth and humor, though violence and abuse also figure in these lives. Recollections and conversations often carry the storytelling, and disagreements over what happened draw attention to how people explain themselves and judge one another.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Conversational · Direct · Witty
- Tone
- Earnest · Humorous · Reflective · Warm
- Structure
- Anthology
- Collection
- Anthology · Thematic
- Driven by
- Character · Ideas · Relationships
- Point of view
- Mixed viewpoints
- Setting
- United States · London
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 3 / 5
- Ideas
- 4 / 5
- Structure
- 3 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 2 / 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
- Class
- Family
- Identity
- Love
- Race and racism
- Work
Content notes
- Violence
- Strong
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Mild
- Abuse
- Strong
- Self-harm or suicide
- None
Standing and awards
Canonical
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1978
- National Book Award finalist, 1978
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Fawcett · 1986 · Mass Market Paperback. ISBN 9780449213575.
How long does it take to read Elbow Room?
About 5 hours 45 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 288-page Fawcett edition. Dense books can take longer.
If you liked this
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Robert Olen Butler
Short Stories · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Fawcett
- Publication year
- 1986
- Format
- Mass Market Paperback
- Pages
- 288
- ISBN
- 9780449213575
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 1977
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Short Stories · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction · Contemporary literary
- Editions
- 7
- Languages
- 1 (English)