A Prayer for Owen Meany

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Summary: "A prayer for Owen Meany" - stand. ovations for John Irving!
Review: Actually I don't like politics in literature, because i grew up in East-Germany where there was no other way to publish critical thought than through literature. But though "A prayer for Owen Meany" ist a very political book, I really loved to read it. It was worth reading each of the 853 pages of my edition. This was my 4. Irving-Novel but I'm sure it's the best of them. The story breathes humanity, this is what I especially liked. Irving did a very good job telling Owen Meany's story of destination as an reincarnation of Christ's Passion. It was great! By telling his story out of two different perspectives Irving shows people suffering same way of the circumstances they live in. He compares the hypocritical Vietnam-era with Reagan's lies about the Iran-Contra-affair. With the difference that in 1987 the youth ignores the lies they are told. If there is any appropriate summary: READ THIS BOOK! You won't regret it!

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Summary: I didn't like to read until I read this book.
Review: A Prayer For Owen Meany is a book for everyone. It is a little intimidating at first, because of the religious content, but be sure, that is not what the book is about. Everyone will come away from this book with a different idea of what it was truly about. My interpretation was that it was about a young man named John Wheelwright and his love for his friend Owen. Owen Meany becomes a hero far before the book is over. Once you get into the second half of the book, you won't be able to put it down. The curiousity on whether Owen's prophecy of his own fate will actually be real, will hold you until the very end. This book comes highly recommended from a college student who didn't like to read before she read this book.

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Summary: Plays expertly at the heart strings
Review: This book has hands. These hands reach down inside and grab your heart like a musician lovingly caresses an instrument. It begins by tuning, gently plucking here and there, and getting you in synch with its own key. Once the reader has been prepared, it begins to play its music, pulling at the heartstrings in ways you never thought possible. The key is at times minor, but when it switches to a joyful major, your heart leaps and dances. When Owen strikes the baseball, killing the protagonist's mother, you know it is a chorus to which the lyric of the plot will return often. When Owen brings the professor's car into the chapel, it is a bridge that leaves you humming along. And when Owen finally dies the death toward which fate has pulled him throughout this song, you wonder if the strings of your heart have been broken. I cannot think of a better story that can grab you in such a way, with hands that bring hope to a broken heart while breaking down the hardest of hearts.

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Summary: A Week Doesn't Pass Without Me Thinking of Owen Meany
Review: Owen Meany captured my heart and changed the way I look at my world. He became one of my best friends and helped me understand myself a little bit better. Not bad for a fictional character eh? To say that A Prayer for Owen Meany is the best book I have ever read is an understatement. John Irving's loving portrayal of an undying friendship between two boys who grow up together trying to solve a great mystery is outstanding. It has been said that Mr, Irving is the Dickens of our time. If this is correct, and I believe it is, then this novel is his Tale of Two Cities.

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Summary: And so we beat on...
Review: My favorite book, easily. I never tire or reading and re-reading it. Owen Meany is, undoubtedly, memorable, but I find the narrator, John Wheelwright, as interesting as the protagonist. I also see some parallels (intended or otherwise) betweeen Wheelwright and Nick Carraway in Gatsby. Irving's novel, I think, should be mandated reading for all literture students, for it is sure to become a classic.

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Summary: Good
Review: It's all too easy to say the last great book I read was the best I've ever read. I read this book in 1990, and still haven't read one since that tops it.

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Summary: His Best
Review: Everyone who knows Irving's work knows what a fan of Dickens he is; this book is the proof. If you like the novel, I highly recommend reading it and "Great Expectations" back to back. It's a great juxtaposition and adds the pleasure of both novels

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time.
Review: I am dumbfounded by the homage paid to this thing. After the set-up, one can just proceed to the last few pages for the martyrdom scene. You know it's coming, you know where it's gonna be, and sure enough ... Irving tells you who the good guys are, who the bad guys are. Yea, yea, root for Owen. Watch him rout the unbelieving dolts in his path. This is a rousing testimony to faith? To achieve faith one has to be bowled over by a miracle? Or shabbily tricked into a miracle, like the "evil" Reverend Merrill? This is a very transparent manipulation. When you preach to the choir, you don't have to try very hard.

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Summary: Brilliance
Review: I just finished reading A Prayer for Owen Meany and I don't yet know if I'm happy or angry with my book club for suggesting it. In this day, I've learned of the deaths of Princess Diana, Mother Theresa, and Owen Meany. I will miss them all, and am grateful that I only have to pick up the book to bring Owen back to life. For me, it is a day of death and a day of birth as I am introduced to the brilliance of John Irving. Owen Meany will always live in my mind as an inspiration, a source of strength and a voice of guidance

Rating:
Summary: A book of faith
Review: When I first started the novel it went pretty slow, but it picked up the pace quickly. After I read it for the first time, I really didn't pick up on what everything meant, what things symbolized, and why Owen was so important. But my teacher then explained everything to me and I read it again, and everything fell into place. Owen is a beautiful character with real human characteristics; even though, as he says, he is "God's instrument." The things that he says and does are so unlike any Irving character I've read. I think that Irving outdid himself with this novel in terms of his characterization and symbolization. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who hasn't read it, and I do