#10 in Short stories
Cathedral
- 227
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
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Our view
In “Cathedral”, Raymond Carver turns ordinary lives and relationships into stories of quiet, lasting force. His style is pared to the bone, and the emotion arrives without any raised voice. Not everyone warms to the narrator of the title story, whom some readers find unlikeable. Readers who prize economy and restraint will find much to admire.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Cathedral is the third major-press collection of short stories by American writer Raymond Carver, published in 1983. It received critical acclaim and was a finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.4 across 93 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 39% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Short stories average of 7.8. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.0 | 10 | 11% |
| Hardcover | 8.5 | 83 | 89% |
Frequently asked
How long is Cathedral?
It has 227 pages — shorter than 59% of the ranked books in Short stories.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Short stories — with scores between 7.9 and 8.2, closest to this book.
