Some may consider this a classic. It is on the PBS "The Great American Read" list. I am afraid I did not enjoy it much. It was a chore for me to finish.

While the plot idea itself is good, and incredibly long; it is the storytelling that was an issue for me. The writing requires extreme patience, it is wandering, meandering, and long winded. The ending felt anticlimactic after expectations have went on for 600+ pages. I feel half of the pages could have been eliminated with good editing. This was my first Irving, and perhaps he just is not for me.

Another thought provoking and enjoyable book by Irving. Great storytelling and strong characters. The topics covered were big too; faith, doubt, fate, fathers and modern american history. Charting America in the 1950s and 1960s; hope and disillusionment. Most of all a wonderful story; you can tell Irving is an admirer of Dickens.
Owen and John are two boys growing up in 1950s America. Owen kills John's mother with a baseball. They are best friends whose futures are inextricably linked. Owen believes he has a destiny, God has given him a purpose and a unique voice. The book is the working out and even the endless basketball practice has a reason. So much has been written about this that more is superfluous. A damn good read!

“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory—but it has you!”

For such a long time I've wanted to read A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.   So many friends had rated it highly and urged me to try it that I worried my expectations might go unmet.   I should not have worried because I loved this book.

Right from the outset I had the sense I was onto a winner, even when Irving introduced three topics I'm quite ignorant about - baseball, religion and politics.    The baseball theme was somewhat short-lived whereas the other two endured but it was never to the point he lost me.     Irving is a wonderful storyteller and this novel, though long, kept me highly entertained and engaged throughout.    He infused his words with humor, it was witty - although I suspect at least some of the wit was over my head thanks to my previously declared ignorance on religion and politics - and he made me care greatly for his characters without ever making it overly sentimental or soppy.  (Sure I had a tear or two but I wasn't a slobbering mess).    I enjoyed his literary references and now feel the strongest urge to read Dickens "A Christmas Carol" and Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" (amongst others) thanks to this book.     There was one particular passage from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar which I especially liked (and which was used several times)

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I have yet heard
It seems to me the most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."

Told from the first person perspective of Johnny Wheelwright, this was first and foremost the story of John and Owen's friendship.
As the story unfolds it becomes clear Owen is a very special character, one might even say miraculous.  Spanning the 50's and 60's there is quite a focus on the Vietnam War and the American political scene but it's not really about these things.  It's a story of faith, but also of destiny and fate.    From early in the book readers have a sense of where the book is headed but until the very end we really don't know how or why things turn out as they do.    I know this doesn't really hint at the plot and my review cannot possibly do justice to this book but I'd urge you  to read or listen to it yourself, it's one of those not to be missed books.
 
Whilst I'm busy praising Irving and his storytelling ability it would be remiss of me not to congratulate Joe Barrett who skillfully and quite brilliantly brought to life John, Owen, Dan, and the very many characters - female and male alike - in the audiobook I listened to.    He did an exceptional job and I'd highly recommend this listening experience.

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 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.

John Irving's writing has always been for me a mixture of wonderful and unbearably sad; fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, this one is no different. I love the characters, especially Owen, and the story is great. My only complaint is that this is a very long novel, one for which fifty to a hundred pages could have been cut out with the story being essentially the same. Nevertheless, I really liked it and would definitely recommend, though the novel is not as good as my favorite Irving novel, The World According to Garp. :)

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

I can honestly say that this is one of the worst novels I've ever read. John Irving's writing was terrible and his rambling, seemingly unedited style was the death of A Prayer for Owen Meany. The novel is about two boys growing up as best friends in New Hampshire in the '50s and '60s. One boy is John, the narrator, who is telling the story looking back from the 1980s. The other boy is Owen Meany, whose small size, high-pitched voice, and uncanny religious fervor make him an outsider. Owen, as John discovers, believes he is God's instrument and has all these abnormalities so he can carry out the mission God has for him.

The plot at its core wasn't terrible and I was curious to see how Owen's visions of the future and his religious conviction panned out. Irving is good at foreshadowing and there was definitely humor in the novel, especially in the character of Grandmother Wheelwright, John's stubborn grandmother. But I can honestly say that I didn't care for either John or Owen and to have both of the main characters be unlikable was a mistake. Irving has a tendency to rant. John in the 1980s spends pages and pages ranting about the Iran-Contra affair, president Reagan's shortcomings, and the Vietnam War. These rants do nothing to move the story along and are basically just a heavy-winded, often redundant criticism of American politics. Owen is always so holier-than-thou while being such a flawed character himself that I found him to be a frustrating know-it-all bordering on the insane. I couldn't see why John and Owen were friends, since Owen acts so superior to John and they have little in common.

What really got to me was this novel's blatant sexism. Irving would go out of his way to make it clear that the only purpose of the female characters in this novel was to be sexual objects (unless they were over sixty, like Grandmother Wheelwright). Irving would spend paragraphs ranting about each female character's breasts and would go out of his way to make sexual references about the women in the story. There were many unnecessary crude remarks about women, such as a description of how a twelve-year-old girl looked in her dress without underwear, a stripper picking up an orange with her vagina, and John going on for paragraphs about his own mother's breasts. These descriptions were offensive and demeaning to women and Irving certainly could have left them out.

A Prayer for Owen Meany could have been considerably shorter if Irving had had a decent editor to considerably cut back his ramblings. As it was the novel was boring and pointless. The sexism disgusted me and was wholly unnecessary. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. Reading it is a colossal waste of time.

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.

Wow, this was such a weird reading experience! I knew from the beginning that this was going to be a great story, and I kind of devoured its 700 pages, but at the same time, I kept wondering why that was? This book deals with themes and a time period that I'm not very familiar with. Themes such as the Vietnam War, USA in the 1950s and 1960s and Catholicism. The time period was very vague to me, and I'm sure that an older reader would benefit more than me from reading this story.
Yet, I loved it! John Irving has a unique writing style, and whatever he writes about I seem to devour. John Irving tells this story as a coming-of-age narrative, and I think that's what impressed me the most. It's a story told from the perspective of Johnny Wheelwright, but actually it's a story about Owen Meany. We get to follow the two boys from their childhood and onwards, and this is when John Irving's unique writing style sets in. Irving's books are heavy on this descriptions, and this one is no exception. He spends long passages on information that you have no chance of understanding if you're not familiar with the 1950s - or biblical passages; yet, you are intrigued to read on, and you don't really care about the missed references, because he writes so damn well!
I can assure you that this book is not going to be for everyone. I rated it 5 stars, but I'm sure a lot of people will have the exact opposite opinion from me. That's because of Irving's writing style and way of telling a story which might not appeal to everyone. Not everyone might like the long, 100-page-chapters nor the nerdy passages on for instance tv shows and movie stars in the 1960s. But this is a perfect example of a book that's not perfect (I did find some of these passages slightly boring myself), but it still managed to impact me so heavily that I couldn't NOT rate it 5 stars. I think the thing that convinced me in the end was the way everything wraps up beautifully as well as the magnificent humour that we get throughout the story. I LOVED IT - the question is, will you? :)

4 stars for A Prayer for Owen Meany

This book forced me to think about how far my faith in God could be pushed until I broke. If my faith was ever truly tested, what would/could happen? I like to think that my faith is strong enough for anything and that I believe wholeheartedly with no qualms and no regrets. I hope I’m right!