Which edition is shown here?
Applewood Books · Paperback. ISBN 9781429044523.
Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction
His Family
Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 33 / 100Moderate
- Reading time
- Not availablePage count not recorded
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 3 / 5
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Roger Gale, a widowed New York businessman, promised his late wife he would stay close to their three grown daughters, whose lives now challenge his ideas of family duty. Edith devotes herself to her husband and children, Deborah runs a school serving immigrant families, and Laura pursues the city's social pleasures, announcing an engagement to a man Roger barely knows. Their competing views of work and marriage leave him struggling to understand the women they have become.
Reader notes
Much of the novel unfolds in domestic conversations and Roger's anxious, sometimes wry reflections. It is a reflective family portrait, attentive to everyday disagreements and the distance between a parent's hopes and his grown children's choices.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Descriptive · Dialogue-driven
- Tone
- Reflective · Earnest · Wistful
- Structure
- Linear
- Driven by
- Character · Relationships
- Point of view
- Third person, omniscient
- Setting
- New York City · New Hampshire
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 2 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 2 / 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
- Family
- Marriage
- Parenthood
- Aging
- Community
- Gender
Content notes
- Violence
- Mild
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Mild
- Abuse
- Mild
- Self-harm or suicide
- None
Questions readers ask
How long does it take to read His Family?
A page count is not recorded for this edition, so a reading-time estimate is not available.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Applewood Books
- Format
- Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781429044523
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 1917
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction · Family saga · Social novel
- Editions
- 1
- Languages
- 1 (English)
The catalog does not yet include a matching edition. Details may differ between editions.