I'm sure you can read a million reviews about this book. It seems to be many people's favorite. Let me just say that I have read 5 or 6 John Irving books, and this is the only one that is much more than a good story. About 10 years ago I was assisting a photography class for adults, and one of the particpants, a minister, saw that I was reading this book. He said that A prayer for Owen Meany had more to say about the nature of God than anything he had ever read. We had a fabulous conversation about the book. I am basically an atheist, without the anti-god feeling that sometimes implies, yet despite our religious differences, we took exactly the same things away from this story. It's a powerful narrative.

I may have just met my favorite new/old author! New, as in new-to-me. Why haven't my friends recommended this guy before now? I think my only exposure was seeing the film, Cider House Rules in 2000. And I didn't even know it was from a book by Irving! I say "old" because he's been around for a while now. Tons of popular novels - especially in the 1980's-1990's (even though I understand he's still writing today). I noticed most of Irving's books have high GR ratings as well.

This story holds in the same tradition as other first-person, coming-of-age stories like Middlesex by Eugenides. Strong, first-person narrative. Narrator looking back to his childhood in the 1950's from the "modern" day of 1987. If you like this kind of story where it seems as though the narrator is talking to you personally, as I do, you need to read this book!

The story definitely lends itself to the Baby Boomer reader. I kept thinking about my dad, who would have been the same age as John Irving, as well as the age of the narrator and Owen. In fact, I read some reviews of people that were younger who felt like they couldn't relate because it was such a tale of that post-war generation - capturing the seemingly innocent 1950's to the confusion of Vietnam and the 1960's.

But I didn't find that at all! This was a wonderful novel about friends, loyalty, and faith. These themes stayed consistent in a story that was at times hilarious, devastating, and suspenseful. There was a large cast of characters in addition to the main characters and Irving did a masterful job at bringing them to life. I've known all of those people, and I was sad tonight to close the book on them, and their lives in small town New Hampshire.

This book made me want to be a better friend. Hence, my rare 5-star rating.

I'm short on time for this review, but man, this is the closest thing to "a perfect story" as anything I've ever read.

***I'm back a few days later to edit my review, because I can't stop thinking about this book. It might be my favorite. I might be in love with this story. As the first sentence of the story starts out, "I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice...", well, I am, too.

***SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON IN THE REVEIW***

I think I fell in love with book as I read one specific sentence. It's at the end of the story, when Owen and Johnny are in the "temporary bathroom" with the children, and his dream is starting to unfold.

I thought I had it all figured out - the lunatic kid has the grenade and he's going to try and blow them up. But then I read the sentence when Owen looks to Johnny and says something along the lines of "WE'LL HAVE ABOUT FOUR SECONDS". Maybe I was a little slow to catch on, but it was right then that I realized the reason they had always practiced "the shot". It blindsighted me and I loved it. Irving had made their routine practice of "the shot" so commonplace in their time together, that I forgot about even asking what purpose it served being in the story.

But the sentence carries so much more power than that. At the same time I realized the purpose of "the shot", it also hit home how Owen had lived his entire life for that momemt. He had known his fate, his moment, and not only did he embrace it, he had prepared for it. And when it came time to act and live this moment, he didn't flinch. Just as Owen had lived his life for one specific point and time, the power of this story was revealed to me in one perfect sentence.

It gave me THE SHIVERS.

4.5 Stars. Although somewhat tedious at times, definitely an amazing and unforgettable story. Owen, with his unusual voice and diminutive size is a gifted, emotional, and peculiar character with a commanding presence. Highly recommend for those with the time (600+ pages and a bit of patience)

a whole-hearted kind of irving novel. my irving kick started with the cider house rules and burned quickly through garp (good to start with the classics), a widow for one year (didn't like very much), hotel new hampshire, and then owen meany. irving has a kind of roundness and soulfulness on the one hand that really brings you into the characters. they have full and complex voices and sometimes nearly inscrutable relationships. hardly any other authors i can think of have such a light touch that they avoid explanations of characters but, instead, shed light from a dozen angles on each character over the course of a novel so that the reader, should he or she choose to, may find out these characters' complexities all on their own. much like john updike, irving does not give into the temptation to analyse--psychologically or otherwise--his characters. this is one of the pitfalls, in my opinion, of contemporary literature----the belief that psychological depth must adhere to the systems we all believe in (it's about your mother!).

irving is also arch, witty, and even grumpy in his prose. wonderful characteristics in this age of authors holding hands with their readers. this makes the fullness of his characters so much more rich and rewarding.

also, i have never met an author who can deal with death without, again, descending into the most familiar psychological, analytical, or sentimental formulae. death is one of the most difficult themes for any writer; and is equally difficult in an age that denies finality while embracing drama. having read a few irving novels, i now know that death is, in his world, always potentially around the corner. there is something unrelenting in this part of irving's world; and that makes you trust him as a reader.

I was almost afraid to start reading this as it is 22 CDs long. It's quite an undertaking, especially in these anxiety inducing Covid times that can cause us to be easily distracted and unable to settle in for a long term read. Never-the-less, I got started and became hooked almost immediately. By turns my heart was deeply moved, or I was in a fit of giggles for the first 11-discs. Then, a touch of melancholy set in about 3/4 of the way through disc-19 when I realized that I was moving ever closer to the end of the book and closer to the answers to the questions the author had kept me in suspense about. Finally, I wept at the end.

This is an epic tale and there is so much to unpack and think about. Briefly, it is the tale of a life-long friendship and includes the characters that also touch their lives. However, it is also about the meaning of life and trying to answer the question of what it's all about, the purpose of life, individually and collectively.

These are the highlights, the parts of the book that appealed to me at this current moment in time:

The story of Dan Needham's gift for John Wheelwright inspired me. I had my guess all ready as to what was inside the double paper bag. I was close, but not close enough. I would not have been able to resist peeking, especially when told not to!

Talking of Dan, I loved his character. He was a constant presence in John's life and I loved that John acknowledges him later on in the book.

Another character I loved was John's grandma, Harriet Wheelwright. I loved her acerbic wit and her love/hate relationship with television. Her response to the invention of the remote control, "It was television's final triumph that it could render you brain-dead without even allowing you to leave your chair."

My favorite passages:

"When someone you love dies, and you are not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers."

John scans the audience in the theatre for "the acquiescent presence of Mr. and Mrs. Meany; they were not there. My search was rewarded, however, by the discovery of a sanguinary Mr. Morrison, the cowardly mailman, his eyes darting daggers in all directions, and wringing his hands -- as he might around a throat -- in his lap. The look of a man who has come to see What Might Have Been is full of both bloodshed and nostalgia. Should Owen succumb to his fever Mr. Morrison looked ready to play the part."

"the old footprints in the rutted slush were frozen - fossils of the many souls who had traveled to and fro from Hurd's church."

A description of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which caused me to question my own understanding of this classic tale: "It was such a heartfelt rendering of a conversion. Not just a lesson in Christian charity, but an example of man's humbleness before the spiritual world."

"Owen who had never been anywhere was a considerable romantic on the subject of travel."

Finally, I managed to scribble these quotes on the back of a receipt and found them again! "Even people reading in bed make a little noise," and "an insipid soup of a man."

John Irving is a master of the messed-up. A Prayer for Owen Meany is a careful, tightly-managed piece of stage magic wrapped up into a book. The eponymous character in this book has a distinctive, almost shrill pre-pubescent voice, even into adulthood. It’s impossible to convey that on the page, but Irving tries by rendering Owen’s dialogue in ALL CAPS—during Owen’s few speeches, these can run to paragraphs or a page. I don’t visualize things when I read (I can’t picture Owen’s creepy child proportions, no matter how hard I try), but I can imagine his voice. I imagine the voice of Linus from A Charlie Brown Christmas, slightly higher-pitched and perhaps louder.

Why is Owen’s voice different? There is a reason according to the plot. Thematically, however, Owen’s voice is the most striking signal of his otherness. Owen’s appearance can be described, but such descriptions are transitory—they come and go throughout the text, and it is easy to forget them (or, as in my case, fail to reify them properly). Voice, though … voice sticks. Even if one is not reading aloud, or being read to, one can imagine a voice as one reads silently. And those blatant capital letters scattered across the pages do a brilliant job reminding one that Owen Meany is Different. We don’t find out how different until the very last pages, when everything Irving has left simmering for six hundred pages finally comes to a sharp boil.

There’s a payoff to reading this book. From the beginning, the narrator—John Wheelwright—hints that there is an element of fate to the story. We know that Owen isn’t going to make it out of this alive, and gradually we learn that in the process he will also make himself a hero. What’s creepy is that Owen is aware of this, and as the story progresses, it becomes clearer that Owen is manipulating events to bring his vision of the future to come to pass. From his admission into the army to his practising of “the shot”, Owen devotes his entire life to preparing for his single, shining moment of sacrifice.

It takes a long time to get there. Irving doesn’t let us take any shortcuts. Instead, he provides a slow biography of Owen and John, with an emphasis on their eternal friendship despite Owen’s involvement in the death of John’s mother. Along the way, Irving lays the foundation for what comes at the end of the book. More than that, however, Irving is building a case for Owen’s type of faith. Owen belives—in God, in himself, in the future—and works tirelessly, shrewdly, uncompromisingly in support of that faith. He first scoffs at doubt, then confronts it, then embraces it and emerges from it with a stronger conviction.

I think, at its core, A Prayer for Owen Meany might be a ghost story. Ghosts make appearances in various, symbolic forms—the ghosts in Dan’s annual performance of A Christmas Carol, the voice of Owen Meany that haunts the secret corridor at 80 Front Street, just to name a few. Owen’s glimpse of the future it itself a kind of ghost, echoing into the past. When John finally meets his father, it’s like a ghost coming back from the dead—and to punish his father for revealing himself, John scares him with a fake ghost of his mother.

I’m tempted to single out John as the weak link in this book. As far as a character goes, he’s rather lacklustre. The older John of the Toronto, 1987 scenes is about as interesting as dishwater, and the younger John isn’t much better. I’m not sure this criticism is particularly apt, however; Irving does go out of his way to provide John with plenty of backstory and plot of his own, including the matter of his parentage, the death of his mother, and his own ambivalent feelings towards Vietnam and America. My dissatisfaction with John is more likely because Owen just overshadows him at every turn. But I suppose this book demands a first-person narrator; it needs that closeness and element of fallible human speculation that a limited omniscient narrator just can’t provide.

Another difficult aspect of the book would be its tendency to switch frequently—and without warning—among different times. It jumps from the main narrative to John in 1987 to moments in between with fearsome alacrity. One paragraph it’s 1964, then it’s 1967, and then we are back to 1964. This can be frustrating and bewildering at times, but it indicates the amount of planning and preparation Irving must have done to have everything coalesce in the proper manner. Instead of telling a completely linear tale, Irving somehow knows which moments need to be adjacent to strike the right mood and sense of character.

For all of those reasons above, I’m just gobsmacked by the literary quality of A Prayer for Owen Meany. As a reader and a writer, I just find the execution of this book impressive. Even if I hadn’t enjoyed the story (which I did), I would still have to rate this highly for the inordinate skill it displays. And, of course, my enjoyment is partly a result of that same skill’s ability to manipulate my emotions. There are parts of this book that made me gasp, made me groan, or made me cry.

Owen’s “gift” to Johnny late in the book was perhaps the most emotionally-heavy moment, for me, of the entire story. Irving foreshadows the hell out of the ending, so while it is tragic it wasn’t necessarily shocking. Owen’s “gift” shocked me (and while I have read this before, I had no recollection of that moment). It was a twist that Irving kept carefully concealed, but it made a lot of sense—and it’s so an idea that Owen Meany would conceive. But that’s not even why I’m so moved. It’s those last few paragraphs, when Owen tries to comfort John, to tell John he loves him and that everything will be OK … that, juxtaposed with what he does, is the epitome of pathos and tragedy. I had to stop reading, briefly, not because I was crying or upset but because I was just … floored … by the act and the emotions behind it.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is a complex but well-crafted novel. It has a slow-paced, meditative story that reflects the tension and conflicting emotions in the American zeitgeist during the Vietnam War. Irving touches on life and loss, fear and faith—all the good stuff you need for a truly deep, memorable experience. This is one of my favourite Irving novels and an amazing book in general. It is an impressive and intense performance disguised as a novel.

While waiting for my next book to arrive in the mail, I was casting around for something to read and my eye settled on my much worn copy of this book. It really is the most wonderful book I have ever read, and I have read it several times.

I also like this the most of all Irving's novels, even more than The World According to Garp.

Owen Meany is a decidedly odd child in every way. He is also given to observations that cut like a hot knife through the small town world of New England in the 50's and 60's. I don't do spoilers, so that's all I will tell you about Owen.

Irving's story is told as a huge flashback from the point of view of Johnny Wheelwright, Owen's lifelong friend. There are both heavy handed and deft feather light tricks to the writing. As Johnny spins the tale of what is a truly heartbreaking case of PTSD and layers it with his experiences as teacher in 1987 Toronto as a girls' high school teacher, his contrast of past and present adds to the tensìon. What on earth has broken Johnny's heart so totally? We lean in to perhaps get a hint of how it happened.

Irving's inclusion of Canadian literature from Atwood, Davies and Finlay also endears him to me, including his obviously intimate knowledge of these works as Johnny imparts them to his Canadian Literature students. He includes passages from other tremendous authors, eg Jane Austen, and shows a detailed and thorough knowledge of the Bible, the passages of which are used throughout to emphasize the theme of faith. Not necessarily a churchgoing faith, but a much richer deeper faith.

The book abounds with wonderful humourous passages that even after miltiple readings can bring tears of laughter to my eyes. I often read in bed at night and for the last four or five days I have had to stifle my snickers, giggles and outright guffaws so as not to disturb my sleeping husband.

The richness of Irving's writing always makes me satisfied. His themes are both uplifting and sobering, wonderful and sad. If you haven't read this wonderful novel, now firmly on my classics shelf, I urge you to push it to the top of your wtr list, quickly. It's a thinker. You will want to read it more than once.

''Ono što hoću da ti kažem jeste da ćeš, ukoliko želiš da radiš stvari na svoj način, morati da doneseš odluku - moraćeš da smogneš malo hrabrosti.''

Za prvi čitalački susret sa Džonom Irvingom odabrala sam roman ''Molitva za Ovena Minija'', djelo koje se slilo na 650 strana, i čija se radnja gradi oko Ovena Minija.

Oven Mini je dječak izrazito niskog rasta, piskavog glasa, i dječak nesputane harizme i domišljatosti, a priču o njegovom životu pripovjeda njegov najbolji prijatelj Džon.
Nakon trenutka koji će odrediti Ovenovu i Džonovu sudbinu, otpočeće i Ovenova potreba za vjerom u čuda, predodređenost određenih događaja i želja da ispuni ono što mu se ukazalo kao Božiji plan.

Spajajući priču o prijateljstvu i američkom društvu tokom Vijetnamskog rata, Irving je napisao djelo, koje uprkos svom obimu, nijednog trenutka ne gubi na dinamici, stvarajući rasplet, koji je vješto i prirodno pleten od samog početka, rasplet u koji su utkani svi prethodni postupci Ovena i Džona.

Djetinjstvo, školsko doba, te konačno period regrutacije za rat u Vijetnamu, životni su periodi kroz koje pratimo glavne likove, i koji obrađuju pitanja religije, američke kulture (književnosti, televizije, filma) i američke politike u vrijeme predsjednika Kenedija, i kasnije, rata.

Ovo originalno, duhovito i potresno djelo, koje obiluje sjajnim likovima, situacijama na granici realnosti, humano do poslednje stranice, oda je jednom vremenu, jednom prijateljstvu i nadi da se čuda, na kraju ipak dešavaju.

''Ako ti je do nečega stalo, moraš to da zaštitiš - ako imaš dovoljno sreće da nađeš život koji voliš, moraš da iznađeš hrabrosti da ga živiš.''

Wonderful!

A must read. This book is funny, sad, philosophical , irreverent, thought provoking, very wordy in places, and on and on. The story of Owen Meany will touch your heart! One of the best books I’ve ever read.

This book is special. It's full of unique and interesting characters, but what made it really stand out for me was the way it made me laugh. Never before, and not since, have I laughed as often or as loudly while reading a book.

A long book which I didn’t want to end. I’m not alone in wanting the star of the show back.

He (OM that is) and John Wheelwright are best friends who grow up together in New Hampshire. Their lives are intertwined. They love each other in an almost biblical sense. The Bible and religion will figure quite prominently here, but don’t let that put you off.

These boys are born in 1942, (the same year as John Irving) so we follow them through interesting times in the US of A – the cold war, Cuba, Kennedy assassinations, the Summer of Love and, central here, Vietnam.

Owen, though very small in stature, has a giant personality, one that leads and teaches and understands. John, the narrator is always in his shadow (I did use the word biblical, remember? John was the disciple who Jesus loved?)

Owen Meany is not someone you can forget in a hurry. Irving’s imagination went into overdrive when creating him and his story. Lots of humour, pathos, superb characterisation. Come back into my life, Owen Meany!!

Basket ball will never be the same again for me.

If it’s not on your radar it should be. Be warned! You will probably get a nudge from me in that direction.