In the summer of 1953, during a Little League baseball game, 11-year old Owen Meany hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother. Owen Meany believes he didn't hit the ball by accident. He believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after 1953 is extraordinary and terrifying. He is Irving's most heartbreaking hero.
Reader from Atlanta, GA:
Irving does such a fabulous job of character development it is unbelievable. One can see the naive attitudes of John, Owen's best friend, so clearly and how they follow him throughout his life. The devotion that Owen feels toward John and his gratitude that John treats him like he's "normal" is evidenced by all that he gives up for John. The angst of cousin Hester, the attitudes of the townspeople.. these people just came ALIVE!
Reader from St. Petersburg, FL:
The book A Prayer for Owen Meany is a great book, full of adventure and excitement. Owen and Johnny have a friendship that cannot be broken. Owen is very faithful to his friendship with Johnny. They stick by each other through thick and thin. I really like how the author combines religion with politics, but doesn't make them conflict each other. I highly recommend this book. Owen Meany is very brave. Owen Meany will win your heart. He is truly a great character. Owen Meany is a HERO! Watch how you grow with Johnny and Owen through triumph and tragedy.
CRITICS' REVIEWS:
Editor of Amazon.com
Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the...unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of 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 deat 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.
