A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany." So begins John Irving's new novel.

In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys - best friends - are playing ina Little League baseball game in Gravesend , New Hampshire; one of the boys hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother. The boy who hit the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen - after that 1953 fould ball - is extraordinary and terrifying.
(front flap)

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (1990)

A wonderful, sad, touching story, but a lot of the book is just so boring! I'm torn between giving it 5 stars for the story or 2-3 stars for the experience of reading the book. I reckon 3.5 would be accurate.

I read this years ago in college. I seem to be one who doesn't love it as passionately as others. I think it's because I read it at about the same time I read The Cider House Rules, and I was so moved and inspired by that book, that Owen Meany could never live up to expectations. Owen stays with me though. I think of his character a lot.

Some books are so powerfully affective that they instantly catapult themselves into one's list of favorites. This is one of those.

I've never read Irving before, so I don't know how typical this book is for him. (Now that I've corrected that oversight, I will be continuing to read him.) This is not a book with a complex, labyrinthine plot; it's principally about its characters, especially Owen itself, and it's difficult to write anything approaching a synopsis. Let me say instead that it deals with themes like faith, loss, war, and death, and hope that's enough. It's set largely in hindsight, of the late 1960s, from the perspective of the late 1980s.

The major events are few in number but great in impact. As a character study, it's an incredible one. Irving builds characters so vividly that they feel like real people.

I really liked this book, but it's hard to know what to say about it. There's little point in a plot summary, and I wouldn't want to cheapen it by revealing too much. Know going in that it's dense and reasonably lengthy, and that it's a serious work even if I laughed out loud on occasion while reading it. It handles itself well, avoiding cheapness that it could easily have wallowed in. Definitely worth reading.