A Prayer for Owen Meany

Rating:
Summary: a very good book made worse in the end...............
Review: A payer for owen meany is a story about two best friends, who spends their life in a small town called grevesend, unfortunately owen( a dwarfish boy) kills his best friends(johnny wheelwright) mother, from then he belives that he is an instrument of god. the whole book is about faith and religion, as in one part of the book says " FAITH CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS".
before giving on the negetive review, i would like to tell the best part of the book. the first half of the book is so interesting, the way they spend thier time with their cousins hester, noah and simon, was expressed extremely good, i think john irving should have experienced this. the book conveys a very powerful message about faith, which the author has written in a fantastic way.
the reason for giving three grades to this is because, in the end the author fools the readers by making owen a virgin birth, the author also tries to put him as second christ...........this is crazy. owen meany has a very dominent charecter in the middle of the book, specially as a VOICE. the climax of this book is so foolish, he hasnt proved him as a hero, but as a suicide bomber.
over all if you want a book which is emotional, just go for this.

Rating:
Summary: Um, missing the point?
Review: I am not a faithful man. I tend to be left-of-center. I know this book has a better fit for my life view that it does for others.

But I was given this book by a friend to read when I was ready. I just finished it for the second time, and I'll likely never be ready for the book, but it both heartens and saddens me to know the story of Owen Meany.

To be sure, everyone has a right to be critical of a book, but I believe the less positive reviews miss the point. It's not a book about religion, or politics, or Vietnam. It IS a book about how we define personal faith, about how we deal with our questions about god and religion and faith, about how losing that ONE person in your life impacts the remainder of your life.

It is nothing more than a book about exploration of the entirity of our lives. It expresses that which sometimes we have trouble expressing ourselves. It's about growth, and love, and the special love that exists between friends -- a love that English has no word to describe.

LOL -- I can cry at movies, but I rarely cry at books. This one does it for me -- this one makes me question my own non-faith. It makes me believe that I belong in Canada -- and that the US DOES have political issues we're unwilling to address.

Read this book. Don't deprive yourself of the experience.

Rating:
Summary: Irving's Best Work
Review: Owen Meany is better than "Garp," because it is devoid of bears and ... and strange detours through arcane European geography. A beautiful, hilarious, metaphoric anti-war ballad about a strange little kid who SPEAKS IN CAPITALS and saves his best friend's life in more ways than one.

All of us grew up with an Owen Meany, some of us WERE Owen Meany.

Rating:
Summary: Didn't want it to end
Review: It took me over 3 months to get through this book but I am so glad I stuck with it! Wonderful story line that keeps suprising you until the very last page. The Modern Library hardcover edition was perfect in that physically the pages reminded me of a bible (thin, creaky). It just added something to reading the story that would be missing in a paperback version.

Rating:
Summary: Graham Greene's successor
Review: A weird boy's life is God's miracle. Dreams come true. Nothing is pointless, including impulses to assisted slam dunking in three seconds or under. Like Graham Greene, Irving sees sinful people able to shake themselves under pressure and deliver moments, periods even lives filled with grace and meaning.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic You Will Long Remember
Review: If I had the ability to write I would want to write a novel just like this one. Rare is the novel where the characters are so original, the storyline so delightful and the book so readable.

Owen Meany is a boy who believes three things about himself: 1) that his voice will never change; 2) that he will die on a particular day; and 3) that he is an instrument of God. What this all means is a mystery to him as it is to the reader until the very end. But until then, author John Irving takes you on an often funny, sometimes somber, and (as many previous reviewers have said) on a truly unforgettable ride.

Rating:
Summary: Classic American Novel
Review: One of my top 5 of all time.....a classic.

Rating:
Summary: Pure genius
Review: This is undoubtedly the best book I have ever read. The plot is so complicated and intriguing that when you reach the end, and you finally see how John Irving ties together all of the intricate details, you are left dumbstruck. Despite the many carefully crafted foreshadowing clues, it's impossible to figure this one out until the end. If you've loved other books by Irving, you'll find the same quirky characters, rich symbolism, and literary craft.
Un..forget..able!

Rating:
Summary: Incredible, if FAR too long
Review: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is the story of the life of Owen Meany, an undersized, raspy-voiced compulsive trouble-maker and menace to all things holy, who just happens to also believe he is an instrument of God. The story is told through the eyes of his best friend, John Wheelwright, who recounts the tale of how he has come to believe in God through the story of his best friend's life and death.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is a superbly crafted novel with a wonderful build and among the absolute best, and most touching, payoffs I have ever read. Owen Meany provides a shining example of all that faith and humanity are capable of, and the climax left my heart churning and my soul wretching. Come to think of it, I don't think I have ever felt like that after having read a novel. There is meaning and purpose in every nook and cranny of the finale -- politically, spiritually, everywhere. Truly, everyone should be able to finish this novel and have learned something about human nature, and what it means to make a sacrifice.

That said, I had to sit on this book for about a week after I finished it before I decided whether I liked it or not. In the end, I decided that, despite the genius that dominates much of the beginning and end, the novel is just too long and inconsequential to substantiate itself. In my opinion, Mr. Irving could have easily cut this novel directly in half; very little between pages 150-450 of this 617 tome is relevent to any character or situation involved in the story -- and worse yet, I didn't find the contents of these pages intrisically interesting, either. I didn't find anything interesting about Owen writing for the school newspaper (was that 50 pages? 100?) or critisizing the head of their private school for another 100. Those pages would have been far better spent investigating the identity of John's father and Owen's unconventional spirituality -- two themes which are almost forgotten in the bulk of the story, when they should rightfully take front stage center throughout. They don't deserve to be forgotten at any point in the story, let along for the bulk of it.

Mr. Irving also seems to bite off more than he can chew in his social commentary. Every once in a while, John (the narrator of the story) cuts to the present day, late 1980's, where he is single, a virgin, and living in Toronto. Mr. Irving's critisisms of the Reagan administration, told through John, are neither relevant to the story nor particular insightful -- given they happened 15 years ago. If they were relevant to the story, I could accept this, but the story is told in the 1970's. Irving offers social commentary there, as well -- which is within the confines of the story -- but would have done well not to stretch his agenda beyond that.

Otherwise, I don't know what to say. Some people might find Owen Meany interesting enough of a character to get around the story's low points. Even if not, it's still a novel worth reading. The characters are interesting and the moral is profound.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is an absolute must read for fans of Irving or people looking for a view into the workings of the divine. A unique vision of divine fatalism and faith adorns itself to every page, and it makes for quite a unique read.

Matty J

Rating:
Summary: Needs to Trim the Fat
Review: There are some exceptional parts about "Owen Meany"...and then there's everything else. The problem isn't so much that it's 617 pages, it's that of those 617, there are quite a few that just don't seem to matter. Almost all the pages focusing on the narrator John, for example.

It's unfortunate that Mr. Irving chose to write this novel as first-person from such a dull character's point-of-view. The only time John Wheelwright has anything to say is when he's badmouthing the Reagan administration about the Iran-Contra scandal. When this book was written and first published that probably had great relevance, but fifteen years later it is old, OLD news. John's diatribes against Americans can also make this book tedious for American readers, who suffer through enough reading about his dull post-Owen Meany existence that he shouldn't insult them on top of it.

There really was no great benefit to the parts of the story taking place in Toronto in 1987, because NOTHING interesting happens. John Wheelwright is such a dull nonentity that these segments only bog down the story. If they were removed, it would cut out at least a hundred pages and move the story along better. The "present day" segments contributed to one of the novel's least attractive features, which is how jumbled up things always seem. Usually a book will go from Point A to Point B with maybe a few flashbacks, but "Owen Meany" is constantly jumping all over the place. It became a confusing distraction that inhibited my enjoyment of the story.

The story here is Owen Meany, and while I didn't like him at first; by the end I really started to sympathize with him. While not exactly a Christ-figure, he is a tragic character whose story harkens back to the classic Greek tragedies. If I knew at the beginning of the story what I knew about him at the end, I would have liked him for the whole novel. And that's the problem with the whole book.

If this had been written in a 3rd-person omniscient point-of-view, focusing just on Owen, and written in more or less with a straight, chronological progression, then it would have been an amazing, tragic novel. It would have been shorter, leaner, better, and I would give it 5 stars. The jumbled-up, often dull mess Irving presents instead is barely deserving of 3 stars.