Books › A Prayer for Owen Meany
A Prayer for Owen Meany
First published 1989 · 852 pages
A sprawling, tragicomic meditation on faith, destiny, and the enduring ghosts of childhood friendship.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like sitting with an old friend as they unspool a lifelong, ghost-haunted memory. It is a deeply leisurely, digressive experience, moving back and forth between a bitter, indignant present and a golden, tragicomic past in mid-century New England. The atmosphere is steeped in autumnal nostalgia and a creeping sense of predestination, where every bizarre anecdote and eccentric character eventually locks into a devastating, inevitable design. The prose is expansive and motif-heavy, famously punctuated by the unforgettable, shouting voice of its central figure. It will delight readers who crave sprawling, emotionally exhausting epics that balance dark, absurd humor with profound, heart-wrenching questions about faith, fate, and the collateral damage of history.
- Mood
- bittersweet
- fateful
- autumnal
- melancholic
- Tone
- tragicomic
- nostalgic
- indignant
- earnest
- reverent
- Pace
- leisurely
- Themes
- the weight of destiny · loss of innocence · nature of faith and doubt · lifelong friendship · the shadow of war
- The writing
- Expansive, digressive, and richly detailed, marked by recurring motifs and unforgettable typographic quirks.
- The arc
- Begins in nostalgic, tragicomic childhood memory and slowly tightens into a devastating, inevitable, and spiritually profound climax.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love sprawling, character-rich epics that blend dark humor with profound spiritual and emotional questions.
Content notes
- death of a parent
- grief
- war themes
- child endangerment
About the book
"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or 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; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany." So begins John Irving's new novel.
In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys - best friends - are playing ina Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire; one of the boys hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother. The boy who hit the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen - after that 1953 fould ball - is extraordinary and terrifying. (front flap)
Description from Open Library.
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