A Prayer for Owen Meany (original 1989; edition 1989)

I read this for class - grudgingly - and was pleasantly surprised. I really had to rush through it, and that's not at all how this one is meant to be read, despite the ease with which you get wrapped up in it. This one is definitely on my reread shelf. ( )

I zoomed through this, whenever I was willing to pick it up at all, because I just didn’t like it and didn’t want to have to spend too much time reading it.

I should like it. I have many friends who’ve given it 5 and 4 stars, much of it takes place in “my era” and I feel as though I should like Irving’s work, all of it.

But this is just too weird for me. And I really couldn’t stand all the content about religion and faith and the way it was addressed I found incredibly irritating. Very peculiar story!

I couldn’t even care about the characters. Everything was connected and wrapped up neatly so I can admire that skillfulness but since I didn’t enjoy the story, I can’t muster that much admiration.

I’ll have to give it another chance sometime. The only reason I persisted and kept reading is that this book is the book for my next real world book club meeting. I’ll bet they’ll all love it. What’s wrong with me?! I guess this one just isn’t my cup of tea. Irving is often too strange for me actually, although I did like Garp and loved The Cider House Rules movie. I didn’t like this at all though. I will be interested in our book club discussion because I suspect I’ll be alone with that opinion.

Oh gosh. I didn’t record my reading start date and I have no idea when it was, but I know I started it over a month ago. ( )

Goodness, I started reading this a year ago, during my trip to Italy. It was recommended to me by my dad, who rarely reads fiction and never recommends books, so I was very much expecting to be blown away by it. Particularly since people I know on GR have loved it and given it very glowing reviews. I don't know if it's the piecemeal way I read it, or life getting in the way, or just not being suited to the book, but it was so dry to read and I could never get swept up in it or really interested in any of the characters. The last part of the book was the only part that really got through to me -- that part is good.

It's been suggested that it was probably wrong place, wrong time for me with this book, so I am keeping my copy in hopes of connecting with it better some other time. And maybe I'll read something else by John Irving in the meantime -- any recommendations? ( )

Owen Meany is a strange child. Almost freakishly small, and with a terrible voice, he is huge on faith, but not so crazy about religion. But Owen has faith that God made him the way he is because he has a Higher Purpose to fulfill.

This came awfully close to being a 3 star read for me. The book just seemed to get longer and longer. It was finally about 100 pages longer than my attention span for the story. But once I got to the end, I realized that everything was essential, even what I thought were tangents. John Irving did a great job of tying up all the seemingly disparate threads at the end.

I mostly liked Owen. There was one section where he seemed to act like a jerk, and he almost lost me. But even that got explained to my satisfaction.

I've already returned this book to the aunt I borrowed it from, but there were some great quotes in there that made me, a relative newcomer to any knowledge of politics, realize how little things actually change. Like the part where Owen's friend John, gets on a rant about how the President's a jerk and needs to be impeached, and if he's stupid enough to let other people tell him what to do he still needs to be impeached. Sound familiar? He was talking about Reagan. Or the part where someone talks about this dashing young man running for President, and how the country can't be swept away by his charisma because experience is what really counts. That section was talking about JFK. So that was pretty interesting to read.

John Wheelwright is the narrator of the story, and he's just a blah little character for me. He was okay when he was young, but he's telling the story something like 15 years later, and he keeps interrupting Owen's story with details of his (John's) current life. I hated those parts. They served their purpose of showing Owen's effect on others' lives, but I got sick of them.

But if you're in the mood for a book that is somehow laugh-out-loud funny, ultimately touching, and a lot about faith and politics, you'll probably enjoy this one. ( )

yes yes yes!!! the cover of this book calls this book 'extraordinary' and it is nothing less. there is so much i want to write - i want to write that philip roth needn't have written american pastoral because this was already written a decade before. (and far better, i might add.) ok, so some of their issues are different, but overall, this booked so evoked american pastoral for me, and the difference in quality for me is obvious. this book is definitely not for everyone. but i loved it. this is easily the best john irving i have ever read (i have only read 3 others - the 158 pound marriage, the hotel new hampshire, and a widow for a year) but this book soars above the others. i don't feel irving is a terribly good closer, and the same is true of this book, but the rest of it more than makes up for what the ending lacks. this book is funny in a way that i didn't expect from irving, and also touching.

it goes between the main character in 1987 and his memories of growing up in the late fifties and through the sixties. so vietnam is crucial to the book, as is reagan and the iran contra affair. the commentaries on government and reagan are so appropriate today as well. details aside, it could have been written about current events.

i love what he does with religion in this book, which is also crucial to the story. i love what he does with the religious people in the book to humble them, and make them perhaps less 'christian' than others in the way they live their lives. and that they question their faith, sometimes more than any lay people do. and the icing on the cake regarding finding lost faith. (i won't spoil it as it comes at the end, but it's brilliant.)

ok, so john irving has issues around sex. this book emphasizes them far less than the others i've read. for him, really, hardly at all. i would say, though, that in this book his female characters are disappointing. there's really only two major female characters and one is sex-crazed, and while a strong woman, not exactly well adjusted. the other major character is present throughout the book but remains pretty undeveloped. the other featured female is a perfect ideal, but she doesn't get to live long enough for us to know if she would have lived up to that ideal or not. based on other characters in the book (and the fact that she's not the jesus character in the book) we can assume that she wouldn't have.

the following quotes are a good takeaway, and kind of a supershort overall summary of the book, but first, something that i take away, but i'm actually not sure if irving meant this or the exact opposite (spoiler alert; skip to after this paragraph if you don't want the spoiler): the entire book is centered around this character that you know is going to die doing something heroic. everything prepares you for this, and on faith, you accept it. after all, throughout the book you're told the value of faith. you are, of course, also told the value of doubt, but this is something the reader doesn't doubt. and then when it finally happens, you finally find out about the hero's death, it could hardly be more anticlimactic. maybe that's just my opinion of it, but it seemed totally a wasted death to me, and maybe that's irving's point after all. that everything led up to this penultimate moment, and it was a complete letdown for everyone - the hero did save lives, but only after putting them in danger in the first place, and not in the way he'd imagined. he shaped his life around this one moment, and it was for naught. the hero would have served the world far better without his sacrifice. i love it. so intense.

i enjoyed this so much, from beginning to end.

"...I have a church-rummage faith - the kind that needs patching up every weekend."

"...if you're lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it."

"Although the sun had set, vivid streaks of vermilion-colored light traced the enormous sky, and through one of these streaks of light I saw Owen's plane descending-as if, wherever Owen Meany went, some kind of light always attended him." ( )