A Prayer for Owen Meany

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for all ages
Review: A Prayer For Owen Meany is one of the greatest books I've read with excellent development right up to the very end. Without the downfall of being predictable, this book keeps you on your toes with a small town and two friends' lives, right up to the very end. I'd suggest this book to anyone!

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books ever
Review: I read this awhile ago, but am shopping for books. I love this book! It was unpredictable, fluid and strange and very funny. It's a good size book and I read it in a few days. I just couldn't put it down.

Rating:
Summary: An all enveloping experience!
Review: This was a great book that captured my imagination and my heart. I was totally lost in the character's lives! Great stuff

Rating:
Summary: This is the only school book I would willingly read!
Review: I love this book! It's so real and vivid in description. I read this book in my sophomore year in high school and I really enjoyed reading it and writing an essay on it (and I hate writing essays!). This is such a moving novel and a true masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: I must have read the wrong book!
Review: I don't get it! While this book was easy to read, it was so boring to read that I grew angrier with each page instead of interested! On and on about the same things. The characters were flat -- neither likable nor unlikable -- more like background at a dull party.

Rating:
Summary: Gives you the shivers
Review: I can't speak as a fan of John Irving, since this is only my second book I've read by him. But 'Cider House Rules' impressed me pretty much and 'Owen Meany' does as well.

The story about little Owen Meany, who has a strange voice, seems to his destiny and has an big impact on anyone he meets, is hard to retell and very complicated. If you would try to tell it completely you would surely forget some details and once you've read it you know that every detail in this book is necessary.

It's about religion as well as about friendship, war, sex, politics, literature, television, etc., etc. It's about all those things. You can't just say it's about one thing, as religion, as you also can't say 'Cider House' is just about abortion. Of course both have somehow main topics, but in the end all comes together.

I was rarely so impressed by an author's talent to write. Irving has such a craft, such a wonderful way to write, it's just astonishing. It's one of those books you can't believe someone has imagined all these events. There are so packed with details you would think it was real. But on the other side everything's so weird, you'd never believe it's real. The storyline is so well-thought, that events from the very beginning relate to the very end. When close to the end Owen and the narrator, his best friend Johnny, try to remember events in their lifes, you feel as if you know them and as if you remember those things too. You do actually, because you read about it. You get the full life of these two guys and you surely think you know them personally.

This book took me two months to read and this is very unusually for me. I am a fast reader, I normally have one book per week. But this one is like a journey. You don't go through it very fast, but you do page after page. I mean, surely, it's not a small book, but it's just enjoyable. You relax in it. And you start to think like the characters talk. I can't count how many times I thought something 'gave me the shivers'. I never even heard that expression before!

'A Prayer for Owen Meany' is a wonderful and even if you could maybe think it's a bit boring in the middle (when Johnny tells about his life the most) it still gets you in the suspenseful, exciting, solving end. At the end you're just astonished, that you know the characters so good you understand everything that happens without explanations. It's a book hard to leave.

Rating:
Summary: You'll be praying too
Review: "I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice . . . ." In just those twelve words one is pulled into John Irving's novel so quickly, one will yearn for more once one reads his first paragraph. I am once again delightfully surprised and amazed by Irving's power with words. Irving journeys through the emotions and questions constantly being contemplated by man/woman kind since the day we evolved from our primitive ancestors. Although this novel deals with mainly western religion, it appeals to faith in a broader and deeper sense. I am so grateful that I accidentally stumbled onto this novel as it has made me re-examine my beliefs in force that may or may not guide man/woman.

Rating:
Summary: This is my all-time favorite book
Review: I laughed, I cried, I recommend it to everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Life Changing
Review: To call Owen Meany the greatest novel of a lifetime is not a stretch. I have read this book many times over the past 10 years and each time it has helped me re-evaluate the important things in life. In Johnny and Owen's friendship is the truest form of love - simple, deep and everlasting. In Owen is the truest form of belief - in the seen and the unseen. Couple these with John Irvings writing style and underlying message and the only thing that can be said is "life altering". A must read for anyone who has had doubts about family, love or god.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: As Joseph Campbell says, the best things in life are undefinable, the second best are when we try to define the undefinable. John Irving has created a masterpiece! In it, he recognizes the fact that faith is undefinable. I learned so much from Owen and Johnny about life and faith and myself. A Prayer for Owen Meany is definitely one of the best books I've ever read. It is so hard to explain the plot because there is no real sequential plot at all, there are events which support the message Irving is conveying. I highly recommend this book! So if you haven't already read it...or you saw the movie version(Simon Birch), you've been gypped! go read it!