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Brilliant,
Addictive,
Epic

4 reviews

A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving

Published: 2012-04-03
Mass Market Paperback : 640 pages
6 members reading this now
14 clubs reading this now
7 members have read this book
Recommended to book clubs by 3 of 4 members

"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."

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Introduction

"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."

In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary.

Editorial Review

Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose." When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn't cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras.

The book's mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies's Deptford trilogy, and the fatal baseball relates to the fatefully misdirected snowball in the first Deptford novel, Fifth Business. Tiny, symbolic Owen echoes the hero of Irving's teacher Günter Grass's The Tin Drum--the two characters share the same initials. A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on literature, history, and God. --Tim Appelo

Excerpt

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Discussion Questions

Suggested by Members

Do you feel that God has a plan for everyone? If so, why? If not, why?
by catzpawz00 (see profile) 06/18/14

Notes From the Author to the Bookclub

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Book Club Recommendations

Watch the film \\
by catzpawz00 (see profile) 06/18/14
The first half of this movie is based largely on the book. While the second half deviates from Irving\\\'s ending it would be a great talking point to discuss the differences and what you liked or disliked about each.

Member Reviews

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by Beth A. (see profile) 07/18/17

 
by Cheryl J. (see profile) 06/27/14

 
  "It All Comes Together in the End"by Angelic S. (see profile) 06/18/14

I feel like Irving is such a great writer to be able to take so many elements from a book and weave them all together. Only four of the twelve members in our book club completed the book bec... (read more)

 
  "A Prayer for Owen Meany"by Luann P. (see profile) 05/15/14

I liked the first 300 pages of "Prayer for Owen Meany". I felt that the author used the last 250 pages to reiterate his political and religious beliefs. He spent a great deal of time "name-dropping"... (read more)

 
  "A Prayer for Owen Meany"by Elizabeth M. (see profile) 03/11/14

Loved this book! Normally I stay away from books with f-bombs--get sick of it. But, the novel never left it's moral center. Great writing, great story and unforgettable, strong characters.

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