HEY, REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE LIKE "I GUESS I SHOULD READ The Tin Drum BUT I WISH IT WAS MORE OBVIOUS AND ALSO THAT IT WAS WRITTEN BY AN OLD FUDDY-DUDDY"? JOHN IRVING REMEMBERS THAT TOO

My favorite John Irving and I have read almost all.

It was Owen Meany who taught me that any good book is always in motion – from the general to the specific, from the particular to the whole, and back again. Good reading – and good writing about reading – moves the same way.

John Irving is a great believer in the power of opening and closing lines. The one I have chosen above comes from the middle of the novel, but it explains both my fascination with the hero of the story and my goals in reviewing – connect the universal with the individual. Implied is a judgment of value: this is a great story, one that I admire despite several shortcomings or mannerisms that turned the reading experience into a see-saw ride from the sublime to the annoying.

The ‘sublime’ is in the universal search for meaning, for a direction in life. The word prayer in the title, and the famous opening lines, point towards an exploration of faith in the modern age. Two boys grow up together in a small town in New Hampshire. We follow them from the 1950’s to the late 1980’s, with a major turning point during the Vietnam War. John Wheelwright is a scion of what is the equivalent of local aristocracy, the wealthiest and most respected family in town. He is good looking but extremely shy and unassuming. Owen Meany is coming from a blue-collar background, a dysfunctional family, yet he is assertive, determined, charismatic, despite his diminutive size and his piping loud voice.

John Wheelwright is the narrator, from the perspective of an old man remembering in extensive flashbacks the events of his childhood and youth, events dominated by the personality of his friend Owen Meany. Contemporary observations of John’s life in self-imposed exile in Canada are anchoring the story in the present. John is a bland character by design: he is a witness of the times, not an actor. That role is reserved for Owen. In a Christmas pageant John describes himself as a Joseph, a passive element in the myth. Right from the first page we learn that John is on a quest to understand and to eventually embrace religion. He moves in childhood from Catholic to Episcopalian to Presbyterian and several other popular faiths of the period, with detours into hippie and anti-war culture. As a child, he follows the traditions of his parents and family. As a student he starts to ask questions and to have doubts. His spiritual journey is also expressed by his search for his father, a secret that his unwed mother took with her to her early grave.

What made Mr. Merrill infinitely more attractive was that he was full of doubt; he expressed our doubt in the most eloquent and sympathetic way.

The first key to the novel for me lies in this Pastor Merrill and his lack of faith. Trough John and Owen, Irving proposes a rebirth of Christianity not by following the old dogma, but by telling new stories, better adapted to our modern culture.

He taught the same old stories, with the same old cast of characters; he preached the same old virtues and values; and he theologized on the same old “miracles” – yet he appeared not to believe in any of it. His mind was closed to the possibility of a new story; there was no room in his heart for a new character of God’s holy choosing, or for a new “miracle”.

If John is the passive voice, Owen Meany is very much the active one, the needed “miracle”. He always knows what he wants and he always knows how to make the others do what he wants. If anything, he is a little too obvious a plot device, with so much foreshadowing and manifest destiny expressed through him:

On the subject of predestination, Owen Meany would accuse Calvin of bad faith. There were no accidents; there was a reason for that baseball – just as there was a reason for Owen being small, and a reason for his voice.

And: I remember how he had appeared to all of us: like a descending angel – a tiny but fiery god, sent to adjudicate the errors of our ways.

... he was still and would always be The Voice. He demanded attention; and he got it.
I don’t want to go into details about the spiritual journey undertaken by the two friends. It has, like the rest of the book, its ups and downs, its rushing to the finish line moments and its slogging at a snail’s pace interludes. What I want to point out are two other keys to understanding the novel:

-tIt is an extremely detailed and lovingly drawn journey down memory lane for the writer, incorporating many autobiographical elements of a sheltered childhood and of a controversial education in a private college in Exeter, New Hampshire, followed by a growing political awareness and militancy. This moving from the universal search for truth to the particulars of life in a small town worked very well for me, despite being almost drowned in the ordinary details of day to day life for the boys. The talent of John Irving shines brightly in his character sketches and in his ironic brand of humour, one that exposes the ills of society without foaming at the mouth anger. The older version of John is though a much bitter narrator than the younger one ( THIS COUNTRY IS MORALLY EXHAUSTED. ), spending too much time criticizing the politics and the leadership of his native land. The targets of the author’s satire are many, but the most time is spent on school leaders ( HOW CAN THEY PRESUME TO TEACH US ABOUT OURSELVES IF THEY DON’T REMEMBER BEING LIKE US? ) and war mongering.

-tIt includes metafictional elements, by making the older John both a reader and a teacher of literature, examining the way stories shape and define our understanding of the world. It also connects with the first thread, with the need to create new stories instead of blindly following the old ones. One of the examples chosen to illustrate the point is John’s doctorate study of “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and the importance of predestination in the work of Thomas Hardy. It also gives us John’s favourite quote as a storyteller, also borrowed from Hardy:

A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling. We storytellers are all ancient mariners, and none of us is justified in stopping wedding guests, unless he has something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experiences of every average man and woman.

Which quote bring me to the few reasons I didn’t rate this present novel among my favourites, despite the engrossing experiences recounted here and the beautiful prose of John Irving.

-tThere are a LOT of ordinary experiences. The novel feels padded, and some of the salient points are made not once or twice, but five or ten times, as if the ordinary reader is too thick-headed to get it right the first time.
-tThere is too much predestination, maybe not surprising in a novel dealing with religion and faith, but something that I find personally very difficult to accept. I am a natural doubter, and admire people like John Randi who are working to expose the usual scams of confidence artists. Most of my beef with religion comes from the injunction to believe in the absence of evidence, something our John spends his whole life trying to embrace. ( It’s a no-win argument – that business of what we’re born with and what our environment does to us. And it’s a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth. )
-tSpeaking of John, he is such a wet noodle as a person, that I had absolutely zero interest in his struggles to get a girlfriend or to make a career for himself. His only relevance is as a sounding board for the author’s faith explorations.
-tOwen is better company, and a LOT of fun to have around, but so over the top in his portrayal that I never for a minute considered him as a real person, as opposed to a theatrical role.  his virgin birth was total overkill, as his angelic nature was already abundantly revealed).

Conclusion: John Irving confirmed that he is one of the most talented storytellers on my library shelves, intellectually provocative and touchingly empathetic towards his characters. Owen Meany is a memorable hero of our modern world, but I don’t plan to re-read his story anytime soon. I plan to read instead “The Tin Drum” by Gunther Grass, which I understand served as inspiration for John Irving in writing the present novel.

This narrator is brilliant! He voiced Owen perfectly.

I didn’t cry as hard this time, but this is my third read of this book and it remains an all time favorite.

It's hard for me to put into words exactly what I felt reading this book. Irving tackles the two most controversial topics known to mankind; religion and politics in a very brilliant and masterful way. It felt like he accurately captured the feeling of an entire nation during a particular time period. It felt like a transcendental experience reading about Owen Meany a character whose story I believe in so many ways mimics the story of Jesus.

In Owen Meany, John Irving creates an outstanding, complex character that will stay in your mind long after you read this book. He has strong faith in God yet he doesn't hesitate to criticize religion. He's a small boy yet he ends up swinging a baseball bat with so much force that it ends up killing his best friend's mother. He doesn't support the Vietnam War yet he joins the army to participate in that same war. His friendship with Johnny, the narrator is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.

When I first started reading this at no point did I think it was a book on war in fact, I've been trying to stay away from war books but as I read on I found that I enjoyed it and it's probably one of the best war accounts I've ever read. He gives an extensive and critical look at the Vietnam War and US politics. At first, when it was introduced halfway into the book I was thrown off a bit because it started suddenly and I felt he came on too strong but then I realised this book was published just a few years after the Vietnam War ended and that this book was an accurate depiction of what Americans were feeling at that time.

I don't know if the author is religious but the religion bit of this book was also well done; The criticisms of the church, the description of faith. He captured in detail the questions most people tend to have about religion.

This is a story I know will stay in my mind for a very long time. I can't wait to read his other books!

It’s a while since I finished this book – I felt I just needed a little time to gather my thoughts on it; there’s a lot to take in. For those who have yet to experience this amazing book I’ll quickly summarise the set-up. The two main characters are Johnny Wheelwright (through whose voice the tale is told) and his best friend Owen Meany. Owen is small in stature (possible less than five feet tall, fully grown) but big in character. His voice – we’ll come back to that – dominates the novel. Set in a small New Hampshire town in the 1950’s and 1960’s, it opens with the catastrophic news that Owen was the cause of the death of Johnny’s mother. A mishit baseball shot struck her on the head, and she died from the resulting trauma. How this individually affects the pair of them and impacts the relationship between them is one element of this novel, but just one element. The book can be seen as an anti-Vietnam war rant, which I believe it is - in part. It can also be considered the musings of a non-religious man (the author professes that he can accurately be described in this way) on the teachings of the bible and the way in which these lessons can guide people’s thoughts, behaviours and the relationships they forge. It’s also a rites of passage tale of two boys growing up amid the confusion of everything that’s going on in their lives.

Aside form his height (or lack of it), Owen’s voice is his standout feature – it’s a nasal scream that is captured in the written version by being shown, throughout, in full capitals. In the excellent audio version, I listened to the reader produced what I can only describe as a compellingly accurate rendition of the author’s description. It’s a haunting, screeching, and slightly disturbing voice that absolutely stood out from the crowd. And Owen himself stands out in so many ways – he’s wise, loyal, challenging, outspoken, and kind. He’s the kind of friend I believe we all wish we’d had when we were growing up.

There’s humour here, too. Some of Owen’s verbal tirades had me smiling and sometimes laughing out loud. And there’s a mystery to be solved concerning the identity of Johnny’s father. This is a book that entertained, informed, and challenged my perceptions in so many ways. I can only say that I was so sad to finish this tale that it’s taken me a week or so to get over the loss of it. Is it the best book I’ve come across this year? It’s more than that – much, much more than that. I know we all experience these things in our own way and I’ve no doubt some will be frustrated and switched-off by elements I found compelling here, but I’d urge anyone who fancies a thoughtful and possibly memorable journey through the lives of two people growing up to grab a copy of this book. With luck, you’ll find it as wonderful a journey as I did.

I really like the opening of A Prayer for Owen Meany: ”I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice a not because of his voice, nor 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."

A good novel always has a good opening, especially for a writer like Irving, who places great emphasis on storytelling. He particularly cares about how to tell a story. In his works to date, the openings and endings demonstrate highly condensed and overarching narrative techniques. In this book, the opening sentence almost encapsulates the essence of the entire story without feeling like a spoiler, but rather gently draws us into the depths of recollection with his leisurely voice.

In 2009, when Irving published his twelfth novel, he made a small summary of his previous works, highlighting that he always starts writing from the last sentence and then writes forward to complete the story, ending where it should begin. In his works, I always find this correspondence between the beginning and the end, as if there is a mysterious connection, making the opening also the ending, and vice versa.

Thus, the opening of this book is so condensed and refined, and the ending sentence ”I keep praying for Owen Meany" not only aligns with the title but also hints at the story's conclusion. Death is not the focus of this story, but it is omnipresent - not in a sorrowful and painful form, but in a warm and loving way.

Many reviews say A Prayer for Owen Meany tells a story of faith, but to me, faith is not the only theme of this book. Faith is merely the form of Owen Meany's life. We witness his growth and loss, his struggle and death, yet we don't feel his life was so sad and short; instead, we feel warmth.

The world Owen Meany lives in is a lost world, a great irony to the turbulent, riotous, and restless larger world outside. That world has been depicted countless times in John Irving’s works. His novels have an autobiographical nature because they always feature the small town of Gravesend, New Hampshire, a boy dreaming of becoming a writer, and an eternal fairy tale world full of warmth and kindness. In that world, there may seem to be insurmountable class barriers, but pre-modern humanity's warmth and kindness persist, making everyone good and beautiful. Owen Meany symbolizes this lost world not just because he, like Günter Grass’s Oskar in The Tin Drum is a dwarf who never grows up, but more importantly, because his existence highlights the tolerance of this flawed world for imperfection. Little Owen's body becomes the most important metaphor for this lost town. He can only live in this town; once he crosses the boundary into the vast, chaotic world, death comes unexpectedly. Irving even uses a miracle in the novel to have Owen Meany predict his own death date, indicating that the world outside has lost miracles and faith, and Owen Meany, the "instrument of God" sent to the world, can only awaken the remaining humanity through death.

Memory is Irving’s sole writing tool, and his characters are filled with warm love. He creates a world of memory, subtly critiquing the outside world with the theme of lost faith: ”Whenever I hear someone giving a positive summary of 'the sixties,' I feel like Hester - I want to throw up." Owen Meany, who never grows up, always lives in this era. When he leaves the small town and enters the terrifying larger world, the faith he held collapses instantly. His friends cannot understand why someone who loves life and peace would voluntarily choose military service and become a soldier. But in the letters he later writes to friends, I seem to catch a glimpse of some clues. Quoting his favorite writer Hardy, he says, ”Since discovering a few years ago that nothing in life happens as originally promised, I've ceased to worry about various theories. I'm content to live each day as if it were an experiment." To him, this attitude towards life, which is not about being a great thinker but a great feeler, is most commendable. He lives with an experimental mindset, letting his faith be tested by life bit by bit, making it stronger.

Only from this perspective can we understand Owen Meany's choice. In other words, he chose war to test evil, using the extreme form of evil to test the sincere faith he held. Owen Meany ultimately dies at the hands of domestic anti-war extremists. This irony generates tremendous power that deeply moves us.

Pray for Owen Meany: God—please bring him back! I will keep praying to you." This is the last sentence John Irving wrote. Owen Meany took away not just the faith of an era but also its kindness, memories, youthful warmth and friendship, and the lost world. We can never get it back...

3.8 / 5 stars

For f*ck's sake? Really?

Owen Meany's dialogue is printed in ALL CAPS all of the time...

Did any Christian reader miss that HUGE literary clue pointing to the American custom of printing Jesus' dialogues in bright red in the New Testament portion of many of the Christian bibles?

Owen Meany, the main character, is Christ in this updated story of Jesus from the bible. Why not? It should be a fun read, right? It isn’t. It’s dull dull dull.

Vietnam was Buddhist, not Christian, by the way. Quite an ironic intersection of unthinking didactic beliefs on so many levels... Was this the underlying point? I don’t know.

Whatever. What a bore this book is to read. Was this intentional? I don’t know.

I thought the novel might be masquerading as both an ironic fictionalized autobiography about growing up in eastern America in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, and was at the same time satirizing the Owen/Jesus character’s (and Buddhism too) belief in predestiny/fate. I figured the novel would end as a sad acknowledgement of the horrific meaninglessness of faith by religious believers. Combining religion and killing always leads to deluded people. Religious people trust in the efficacy of faith by providing unproveable and juvenile meanings for dying. If you clap, the fairy will live again.

Instead, this book is SO full of sincere treacly sentimentality and dull endless exposition I skimmed the last 400 pages. I was quite sick of Owen and his best friend, the narrator John (3:16) after 543 pages of pseudo-biblical prophecy fulfillment. After all, we all already know the ending.

This novel tells the complex story of what happens to a boy when a friend’s foul ball from a Little League game accidentally kills his mother. Never read it—just did. So mad I didn’t read it earlier.

I mostly read this because I really loved The Cider House Rules, definitely one of my favorite books, and I wanted to read more of Irving's writing. Not sure I enjoyed this one as much. I did enjoy the writing but the book felt long and it was a little slow moving and took me a while to force myself to get through. I didn't find myself eager to keep reading to find out what happened next. It also jumped around a lot which isn't necessarily bad but I think it just added to this languid reading pace. I think I couldn't enjoy it in part because I've moved past being religious at this point in my life so a book whose central theme is one of faith is going to not be something I feel viscerally invested in. I enjoyed the characters and clearly Owen and Hester are fantastic but I think as someone who isn't religious it still feels hard to empathize with what Owen did. The choices he makes to see things through at the end, he didn't have to do that and he didn't even try to change the outcome and it was kind of frustrating to be quite honest. I don't think the book is bad, I think mostly my rating relates to my own lack of enthusiasm about reading a book centered around faith and religion to be honest, and a feeling that the pacing of the book was slow.

Write memorable characters. How many “How to Write” books have said that? Whatever the number, it’s a rule that John Irving must have taken to heart. Readers of this book will not soon forget the little guy in the title. Owen was exceedingly small, and had a high, almost cartoonish voice. But he also had a commanding presence. When he spoke, people listened. In large part, this was because he had a lot to say. He was opinionated, influential, and smart.

The narrator, John, was not as central to the story. But he and his family allowed us to get to know Owen through their interactions with him. Johnny was Salieri to Owen’s Mozart, and Irving deserves credit for making the device work. The member of Johnny’s family that launched the initial part of the plot was his mom. Owen, as a boy, had an almost unnatural attachment to her including an appreciation for the way she filled out a sweater. (According to reviews, breast obsession is kind of a thing with Irving. His newest book is evidently chock-full of boobaphilic references.) Anyway, the whole world within this book was turned upside down with one swing of a bat. Owen, who rarely got to play, and even more rarely got to try for anything but a walk, hit a foul ball that ended up killing Johnny’s mom. Of course, it was nobody’s fault, but Owen began considering himself some kind of instrument of fate.

Despite the initial impressions Owen made, he won over most everyone he met. This included Johnny’s extended family: cousins, father figure, and patrician grandmother with the big house where everyone often met. (As another aside, I wonder why, in the interest of gender equality, there’s no such word as “matrician”.) Though less privileged than most, Owen became a big-shot at the private school that Johnny’s family arranged for him to attend. He was known as “The Voice” for his popular and well-argued op-ed pieces in the school paper.

The plot continues into the Vietnam War era where Owen becomes a soldier and John does not. Several mysteries are explained, but mum’s the word about those. I will say that Irving did a good job sustaining momentum. The only dull parts are those focused on Salieri John in contemporary times. In flashback mode, which is most of the time, the pacing is brisk.

As for themes, there was no attempt to be sly with the Christ allusions. In fact, one scene featured Owen playing baby Jesus himself in the annual nativity play. (I’m big on parentheses today. This time I’m wondering if it’s an old joke to suggest that Christ had an Owen Meany complex.) Then the God stuff somehow morphed into visions and the supernatural. To me, this was a disappointment, because the plot was driven inexorably and gratuitously by it. The story was doing well enough before this sledgehammer blow of thaumaturgy. The surrealism nullified what had previously rung true.

I shouldn’t end this review with a complaint. So I’ll reiterate what an extraordinary character Irving gives us with Owen. I still try to imagine his voice. Whenever Owen speaks in the book, the text is all CAPS so we’re constantly aware that he’s meant to stand out. Along with his voice, we get plenty more distinctions: he’s wise beyond his years, authoritative beyond his station, and as memorable as any writing book could ever recommend.

Much like Garcia Marquez's Vivir Para Contarlo, this book took FOREVER, and I sometimes felt embarrassed to have been carrying it around for weeks. I felt obligated to apologize to people: "I swear I'm a fast reader! I've just had a lot of work to do, and... this fucking thing is 550 pages!"

Somehow, though, it never felt that long. It never felt tedious, I mean; it felt long in the sense that it seemed I had known Owen and Johnny forever. It felt long in that the passage of time was steady and purposeful, never choppy, but never sluggish. In these 550 pages, I became introduced to a world so rich and so comic that I felt entirely a part of it, familiar with every character and every nuance.

I had seen Simon Birch when I was 8 or so; I remember being horrified because one of the boys says, "You look like shit," and I had never heard the s-word in a movie before. I found out the movie was based on this book before I started reading it, and throughout the first half, scenes from the movie kept flashing into my head. As the book progressed, though, the story changed entirely and lost a lot of what made it so powerful.

The religious part of this book, I'll admit, was nearly lost on me - that is to say, I understood and appreciated the language, but I am so entirely unfaithful, so entirely non-believing, that a good chunk of the book's theme was just unrelatable for me. Still, Irving presented Owen's (and later, Johnny's) beliefs in such a compelling, sincere, and apolitical way that I couldn't help but be admiring of their faith rather than cynical.

Further, the political themes in this novel were SO compelling that everything else had been awful, it still would have been a masterpiece. Reading Owen Meany's assessment of Kennedy: "I THINK HE'S A KIND OF SAVIOR... HE'S GOT SOMETHING WE NEED", his hope and optimism and belief in a better government, was incredibly resounding after Obama's election. It's a bit sad, too; the optimism for Kennedy obviously didn't pan out, and one can only hope that the cyclical nature of poor government doesn't continue. This cyclical nature is painfully evident in the narrator's complaints about the Vietnam war and later, the Iran-Contra scandal - he laments a government so willing to put boys in an unjust war, so willing to lie to its people. Obviously, things have not changed at all. But like Owen Meany, I will have faith in something - in this case, faith that things will get better - even if there is no evidence to support it.