A Prayer For Owen Meany
Ratings215
Average rating4.1
Third or fourth reading? Love this book. It struck me this time that it's what The Goldfinch (a DNF for me) was trying to be. And, that's number 100 for 2019.
Irving is a genius. This is now one of my all-time favorite novels.
My full review: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Mind you, I thought this was amazing when I read it in high school, so that was 15 years ago. I think I would still give it 4 stars, though. And I've just re-read it for the fourth time :)
This was fun but at times irritating. Little Owen with his loud voice in CAP throughout the novel proved to be my undoing at times.
This book was a slow burn pleasure. Treat yourself to the audio version as “The Voice” is wonderfully done by joe Barrett (and chosen by Irving).
Inside this 600-page book is an amazing 350-page book. I can't recall wanting to finish a book as much as I longed to finish this one. Sure, moments of greatness. But so much seemingly unnecessary stuff. Oh well, done.
Ploughed through about 40% of this before deciding to call it a day. The narration is all over the place. Paragraphs will start telling one story, then we're in the present, then back in the past at another story, and no clear connection as to why one thing led to another. We keep getting told we'll find things out, but don't. The narrator keeps insisting how consequential OWEN MEANY is, but it's asserted rather than evident in the story. OWEN MEANY IS MAINLY ANNOYING and everything is so tediously directionless. Maybe it's going somewhere (peeking at other reviews maybe something major will happen later in the book) but I just don't care enough to find out.
Having said that there were a few occasions where I laughed out loud, so there is humour in here. Plus I liked the character of Dan who just seemed like a very decent fellow.
I hate not finishing books but time is short and there has to be something more enjoyable out there, than this.
Wow, I loved this book. It was a little long and seemed to drag in parts. The characters are really well developed and easy to connect with.
Memoir-like tale of childhood through young adulthood, told by a young man whose life revolves around his extraordinary best friend. Ideas of fate, prophecy, and religion figure heavily into the story, and it explores the idea of how much a person's beliefs can influence their fate.
The narrative flips around in time a lot. The reader knows what the big events will be before they occur in story order, but you get the details gradually. This playing with the order of events plays along with the themes of fate.
As with all John Irving, there's lots of humor and character development.
A solid four star book. John Irving books are almost always good reads and this is no exception.
John Irving has an astonishing ability to create in a few sentences a complete, flesh and blood, breathing human being with a million quirks and distinct traits who you could pick out of a crowd.
Preghiera per un amico, in originale “A Prayer for Owen Meany” è il settimo romanzo dello scrittore americano John Irving. Pubblicato nel 1989, racconta la storia di due ragazzi, John Wheelwright e il suo migliore amico Owen Meany, e della loro infanzia e gioventù trascorsa insieme in una piccola città del New Hampshire negli anni ‘50 e ‘60. Owen è descritto dall'autore come un ragazzo fuori dal comune: sa di essere strumento del volere di Dio e cerca di compiere il destino annunciatogli da una sua stessa profezia.
La voce narrante del romanzo è John Wheelwright, cittadino del New Hampshire che decide di trasferirsi dagli Stati Uniti a Toronto in Canada ottenendo così la cittadinanza canadese. La storia è narrata secondo due piani temporali: il primo rappresenta la prospettiva di John nel presente (1987), il secondo dà voce ai suoi ricordi: l'infanzia e gioventù trascorsa insieme al suo migliore amico Owen Meany. Il romanzo affronta questioni spirituali come l'importanza della fede, i problemi di giustizia sociale e il concetto di destino, all'interno di una narrazione inconsueta.
Libro estremamente bello, capolavoro semisconosciuto di Irving, uno dei più geniali romanzieri contemporanei americani. Sono pagine che si leggono da sole, che entusiasmano, toccano nel profondo e commuovo il lettore dall'inizio alla fine. Chi si dimenticherà più di Owen Meany? Uno dei personaggi migliori e meglio delineati che mi sia mai capitato di incontrare nella mia vita da lettore: gli si vuol bene, a Owen, un bene profondo e duraturo, nonostante la sua “leggerezza”, e ad ogni angolo per strada sembra di vederlo, sembra che prima o poi lo s'incontrerà e diverrà il nostro migliore amico.
Un mix di amore, dolcezza, passione ed ironia che non può assolutamente mancare nella biblioteca di qualsiasi appassionato lettore. La scrittura è molto piacevole e scorrevole, ma il contenuto del libro non è assolutamente banale, anzi direi che almeno in alcuni punti è estremamente profondo con personaggi immortali, veri, unici e mai banali, inserendoli in una cornice storica resa con potente realismo: l'America dei Kennedy e la guerra del Vietnam sullo sfondo, per arrivare agli anni ottanta.
Una curiosità sull'opera: il romanzo si ispira parzialmente all'opera più nota di Günter Grass, “Il tamburo di latta”. Grass è stato fonte di ispirazione per Irving, oltre che un amico stretto. Entrambi i protagonisti dei romanzi, Owen Meany e Oskar Matzerath, condividono le stesse iniziali del nome e altre caratteristiche, le loro storie mostrano inoltre alcuni parallelismi. Irving ha confermato queste somiglianze. Preghiera per un amico segue tuttavia una trama diversa e indipendente.
Un romanzo intenso e bellissimo, con un finale struggente. Difficilmente se ne trovano di migliori.
I liked it but did not love this book. I have mixed feelings about this one. Some parts were good like the relationship between John and Owen but I felt this was slow and parts were not that interesting.I found there was a little bit too God in this book.
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
—
[Marilyn Monroe] was just like our whole country – not quite young anymore, but not old either; a little breathless, very beautiful, maybe a little stupid, maybe a lot smarter than she seemed, and she was looking for soemtihng . . . She was never quite happy, she was always a little overwieght. She was just like our whole country.
The World According to Garp
is
I have a love / hate relationship with this book. Irving can certainly turn a phrase and his dialog between friends Owen Meany and John Wheelwright is spot-on for teenage boys. Their discussions, at times, are poignant and very funny. But in this book, Irving repeated himself constantly at an infuriating rate, and once I reached the end of the book, realized he was attempting to bash his readers over the head with his ham-fisted attempt at revealing divine symbolism. This 600-plus page novel could have easily been edited down to 300 pages and been just as enjoyable except quicker to read.
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.
I never finished this book. I didn't like the narrator at all. I feel like the story has a lot of potential to be really interesting but the narrator was terrible making it seem boring and completely drawn out. I'm not going to rate this book right now but I'm thinking of giving it a second chance since I already read half of it.
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.