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Amazon.co.uk Review
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mum with a baseball and believes--correctly, it transpires--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish Dr Dolder, Owen's shrink, drunkenly driving his VW down the school's marble steps is a marvellous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose". When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn't change the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras.
The book's mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies' Deptford trilogy, and the fatal baseball relates to the fatefully misdirected snowball in the first Deptford novel, Fifth Business. Tiny, symbolic Owen echoes the hero of Irving's teacher Günter Grass's The Tin Drum--the two characters share the same initials. A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on literature, history and God. --Tim Appelo
DOMINIC HOLLAND, Sunday Express
'a heartbreaking masterpiece of a novel... tremendously ambitious and fiendishly clever'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poignant, funny and thoughtful......,
By
This review is from: A Prayer For Owen Meany (Paperback)
This is a wonderful book in every way - poignant, funny and thoughtful. Johnny Wheelwright recounts the story of his friendship with Owen - a boy of very small stature (dwarfism is never mentioned) who is highly intelligent and socially manipulative. But as well as being clever Owen is convinced he has been chosen by God for a special purpose. He also claims to know the date of his death - a fact that Johnny treats with great scepticism. There is much sadness in the book - Owen seems to come from such an unloving family, Johnny would love to know who his real father is, people die unexpectedly and tragically. But the friendship and love of Johnny and Owen overcomes all this as they move through childhood to adulthood.
The narrative is brilliantly constructed and everything in the story is relevant. Irving explores ideas on organised religion and spiritually and although the story is set in small town New Hampshire the wider political scene is referred to as John links his narrative with facts about the Vietnam War and the Iran-Contra affair. I chose to read this book as it so often appears on those lists of "most favourite books". I left in on my book shelf for over a year - initially put off by the 640 pages. But now I realise it was a wonderful treat just waiting for me! Owen Meany must be one of the best literary creations of all times.....
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favourite Irving book, brilliant stuff....,
By
This review is from: A Prayer For Owen Meany (Paperback)
This is an amazing book. I read it from cover to cover in one sitting (an all nighter, and the exhaustion in the morning was totally worth it!) Oh and just a thought.... is it just a coincidence that most of the reviewers who 'don't get' or were not impressed by this book can't spell! And yes, I know that's a bit mean, but come on now, how could you NOT be bowled over by this book! Highly recommended.
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A heartbreaking masterpiece.,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Prayer For Owen Meany (Paperback)
"What's your favourite..." can be such an irritating question, but for me, for books, there's an instant answer - 'A Prayer For Owen Meany.' I could tell you about angels and armadillos, armless Indians and the headless Mary Magdalene, the lethal baseball, what the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come saw and exactly how it connects with the corpse of a helicopter pilot burned and blistered in Vietnam, and, of course, THE VOICE - and I'd still not manage to get you to the heart of this novel. And the heart is the key to it; like his beloved Dickens, Irving sets out to speak to your emotions, to make you laugh and - ultimately - bring you to tears. It is a masterpiece both of virtuoso plotting and of creating heartbreakingly involving characters. A friend of mine, after finishing the book, said 'For a few days I missed Owen Meany as if I'd known him.' If you do nothing else today, take a recommendation and read this book. Just think of it as my litle gift to you...
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