A Prayer For Owen Meany

Re-reading this one - I read it decades ago but loved it!

A book meant to stay with you for long after you read it. Deeply complex characters that you meet as children and live with as they grow, a suspenseful story that at times seems so ridiculous that you can't imagine an author actually making it up, and a strong sense of reality in place and time, all combine to create a novel that makes you think about the value of friendship and if there is such a thing as destiny.

Once I got into this book, I felt swept along with the story, almost like watching a movie. While I know it's not a book for everybody, I think it's a good novel to stretch your reading comfort zone. I also found myself looking at America's involvement in the Vietnam War from a very different perspective than the one I was raised with, which makes me feel the book was well worth the time.

I've enjoyed John Irving's books for years now and this one just came out on Audible. It came at a perfect time for me. I kept it until we went our holidays to Tenerife in November and I started listening to it as I lay in the sun by the pool.

The book is the tale of Owen Meany narrated by his best friend, John Wheelwright. Owen is small and has a strange voice. It's really the tale of why he is small and why he has a strange voice, but it's so much more than that. The book moved me in a way that no other book ever has. I'm at a point in my life where my faith in God is developing and this book fits right into that. Owen believes in God and has a lot to say on the subject of religion.

One of John Irving's strong points is his character development. In all the books of his that I have read, I've found his characters to be fully 3-dimensional and believable. All are flawed, just as I am, and it makes the characters easy to relate to. I'm not sure whether I'm getting that across very well, but for those who've read Garp or a Widow for a Year, you'll know what I mean.

If only Audible would do more John Irving books. I'd be on them like a shot!

In many ways, this is a very enjoyable book. John Irving's style is pleasantly unadorned. His characters are fairly interesting, and they have some pretty entertaining adventures. But overall, I felt this was a flawed though enjoyable work.

Prayer is the story of two boys growing up in New Hampshire, the narrator and his friend, Owen Meany. The narrator has a very sweet and beautiful mother but he doesn't know who his father is. Owen Meany is small and has a funny voice, but he's very smart and serious and knows he's destined to serve God in some meaningful way. The story is actually told in flashback by the narrator, who has grown up to be an English teacher in Canada.

And if this were a novel about two boys growing up in New England, it would have been pretty enjoyable. But this is a novel about FAITH and GOD and the MORAL EXHAUSTION of AMERICA and its FOREIGN POLICY. Which is really too much baggage for the narrative to carry. The foreign policy angle is in some ways the weakest. It comes from two equally dull angles: much action takes place during the troop buildup in Vietnam, and the adult narrator comments on the Iran-Contra affair. The Vietnam material really doesn't offer anything new. Vietnam was a misbegotten foreign policy adventure, and the counterculture response to it was largely overblown, self-serving, and ineffectual. It's a perfectly reasonable position, and perfectly dull. Dull would be acceptable in an essay about Vietnam, not in a novel. The commentary on Iran-Contra is even deadlier to the novel, as it contributes little to the story. I generally agree with the narrator on Reagan and Iran-Contra; that doesn't make me interested in hearing him opine.

The spiritual elements are more integral to the novel and overall handled in a better manner. The main problem is that the issue of faith in the novel revolves around a miracle, one which we do not learn about until the very end. This miracle, which takes a tragic form, gives meaning to Owen Meany's life and leads the narrator to become religious. The miracle is heavily foreshadowed: heavily and somewhat obviously. I had a pretty good idea of what the miracle would be over 100 pages before it comes about, which made those pages particularly dull and robbed it of whatever impact it may have intended to have. The effect was less of a sense of mysterious forces at work and more of an author going through plot machinations to achieve an effect.

So, I overall enjoyed the story, especially the first half or so before the author really tries to bear down with those heavy themes that his novel is not really set up to handle.

I just re-read this for the first time and would probably downgrade this to a four-star book at most, but I think it's maybe unfair to do that since I admittedly had ruined a lot of the suspense that powered my first read through.

Mostly I think I am perhaps increasingly uncomfortable with John Irving's attitude re: women and sexuality. If I hadn't already left the book in the library I might pull out some concrete examples, but I did. And I'm lazy.

Also the second time around I lost some of my suspension of disbelief for Owen Meany. Aka like, the whole plot. AH WELL, still a good read.

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(First time review)
I know, right, I just now read this book? The hardest thing about this book was that I wanted to tear through it so fast to Find Out What Happened, but at the same time I wanted to savor it.

Anyway, I loved it, it was funny and sad and nostalgic. The weird thing was no matter how many crazy things happened, I was never disbelieving. I guess because the characters (minus Owen) were always like WTF too, so I just felt like they were along for the ride too. Anyway, if you haven't read this yet, probably you should do that.

I can still hear his little voice in my head..

This is one of those books that people either adore or they despise. I'm in the second group. I hated this book. Loathed it. Wanted to set it on fire. I absolutely don't get it. And one of my favorite people in the whole world has told me she loves this book. It's, in fact, her favorite book. How can that be?

I know I am missing something, but this book shocked me and offended me. Help me with this, someone.

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.