About "A Prayer for Owen Meany"
Owen Meany, the only child of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he is God's instrument; he is.
This is John Irving's most comic novel, yet Owen Meany is Mr. Irving's most heartbreaking character.
Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic...Dickensian in scope....Quite stunning and very ambitious.
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW
John Irving is an abundantly and even joyfully talented storyteller.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOKR EVIEW
Reviews
06.01.2009 / John L. Magill / Millerstown, PA
Irving's best work
My recent purchase of A Prayer for Owen Meany was as a gift. Having read that work many years ago, as well as many other Irving books, I believe this to be his best. It is one that I recommend consistently to family and friends, and have found agreement with that opinion in those quarters.
04.01.2009 / Matthew A. Jonassaint / Orem, UT
Skeptical and bitter - but comically, heartbreakingly so.
Most of the negative reviews here are either completely missing an interpretive point of Irving's novel or they had certain expectations that were not met upon finishing. For one reviewer, it's contrived and implausible, and for another reviewer it insults Christianity. But Christianity is h...
[> more]15.11.2008 / Ralene Gregory / Boise, Idaho
my favorite book
This is my very favorite book of my life! It is filled with memorable characters and circumstances. Laced with humor even through trials and the Viet Nam war. If you haven't yet read this book - do yourself a favor. It is incredible and you will remember it for the rest of your life!
The book "A Prayer for Owen Meany" belongs to the following genres:
Fiction Fiction - General Fiction / Literary Literary
| Other editions of this book |
|
About John Irving
John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt, Jr.; March 2, 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978. Some of Irving's novels, such as The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, have been bestsellers and many have been made into movies. Several of Irving's books (Garp, Meany, A Widow for One Year) and short stories have been set in and around Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire where Irving grew up as the son of an Exeter faculty member, Colin F.N. Irving (1941), and nephew of another, H. Hamilton "Hammy" Bissell (1929). (Both Irving and Bissell, and other members of the Exeter community, appear somewhat disguised in many of his novels.)
Irving was in the Exeter wrestling program both as a wrestler and as an assistant coach, and w...