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A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel Kindle Edition
“A remarkable novel. . . . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation. ... An amazingly brave piece of work ... so extraordinary, so original, and so enriching. . . . Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] richly textured and carefully wrought world.” —STEPHEN KING, Washington Post
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary.
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMariner Books Classics
- Publication dateMarch 13, 2012
- File size3510 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The book's mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies's 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
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“A remarkable novel. . . . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation in the somehow exhausted world of late twentieth-century fiction—it is an amazingly brave piece of work . . . so extraordinary, so original, and so enriching. . . . Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] richly textured and carefully wrought world.” — STEPHEN KING, Washington Post
“The magic of A Prayer for Owen Meany is that it forces us into a confrontation with our own carapaces of skepticism . . . It is a brave and subtly disturbing affirmation of faith, and it is all the more remarkable for its engagement with the deepest questions, the most painful mysteries of our lives.” — Los Angeles Times
"Among the very best American novels of our time." — Charlotte Observer
"[A] great novel." — Dallas Morning News
"A work of genius." — Independent (London)
"A heartbreaking masterpiece of a novel." — Sunday Express (London)
From the Publisher
M. Coolman
Ballantine Publicity
From the Inside Flap
This is John Irving's most comic novel, yet Owen Meany is Mr. Irving's most heartbreaking character.
"Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic...Dickensian in scope....Quite stunning and very ambitious."
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"John Irving is an abundantly and even joyfully talented storyteller."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOKR EVIEW
From the Back Cover
In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary.
About the Author
John Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning in 1980 for the novel The World According to Garp. In 1992, Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He won the 2000 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Irving's most recent novel is In One Person (2012).
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Foul Ball
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. I make no claims to have a life in Christ, or with Christ—and certainly not for Christ, which I’ve heard some zealots claim. I’m not very sophisticated in my knowledge of the Old Testament, and I’ve not read the New Testament since my Sunday school days, except for those passages that I hear read aloud to me when I go to church. I’m somewhat more familiar with the passages from the Bible that appear in The Book of Common Prayer; I read my prayer book often, and my Bible only on holy days—the prayer book is so much more orderly.
I’ve always been a pretty regular churchgoer. I used to be a Congregationalist—I was baptized in the Congregational Church, and after some years of fraternity with Episcopalians (I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, too), I became rather vague in my religion: in my teens I attended a “nondenominational” church. Then I became an Anglican; the Anglican Church of Canada has been my church—ever since I left the United States, about twenty years ago. Being an Anglican is a lot like being an Episcopalian—so much so that being an Anglican occasionally impresses upon me the suspicion that I have simply become an Episcopalian again. Anyway, I left the Congregationalists and the Episcopalians—and my country once and for all.
When I die, I shall attempt to be buried in New Hampshire—alongside my mother—but the Anglican Church will perform the necessary service before my body suffers the indignity of trying to be sneaked through U.S. Customs. My selections from the Order for the Burial of the Dead are entirely conventional and can be found, in the order that I shall have them read—not sung—in The Book of Common Prayer. Almost everyone I know will be familiar with the passage from John, beginning with “. . . whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” And then there’s “. . . in my Father’s house are many mansions: If it were not so, I would have told you.” And I have always appreciated the frankness expressed in that passage from Timothy, the one that goes “. . . we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” It will be a by-the-book Anglican service, the kind that would make my former fellow Congregationalists fidget in their pews. I am an Anglican now, and I shall die an Anglican. But I skip a Sunday service now and then; I make no claims to be especially pious; I have a church-rummage faith—the kind that needs patching up every weekend. What faith I have I owe to Owen Meany, a boy I grew up with. It is Owen who made me a believer.
In Sunday school, we developed a form of entertainment based on abusing Owen Meany, who was so small that not only did his feet not touch the floor when he sat in his chair—his knees did not extend to the edge of his seat; therefore, his legs stuck out straight, like the legs of a doll. It was as if Owen Meany had been born without realistic joints.
Owen was so tiny, we loved to pick him up; in truth, we couldn’t resist picking him up. We thought it was a miracle: how little he weighed. This was also incongruous because Owen came from a family in the granite business. The Meany Granite Quarry was a big place, the equipment for blasting and cutting the granite slabs was heavy and dangerous-looking; granite itself is such a rough, substantial rock. But the only aura of the granite quarry that clung to Owen was the granular dust, the gray powder that sprang off his clothes whenever we lifted him up. He was the color of a gravestone; light was both absorbed and reflected by his skin, as with a pearl, so that he appeared translucent at times—especially at his temples, where his blue veins showed through his skin (as though, in addition to his extraordinary size, there were other evidence that he was born too soon).
His vocal cords had not developed fully, or else his voice had been injured by the rock dust of his family’s business. Maybe he had larynx damage, or a destroyed trachea; maybe he’d been hit in the throat by a chunk of granite. To be heard at all, Owen had to shout through his nose.
Yet he was dear to us—“a little doll,” the girls called him, while he squirmed to get away from them; and from all of us.
I don’t remember how our game of lifting Owen began.
This was Christ Church, the Episcopal Church of Gravesend, New Hampshire. Our Sunday school teacher was a strained, unhappy-looking woman named Mrs. Walker. We thought this name suited her because her method of teaching involved a lot of walking out of class. Mrs. Walker would read us an instructive passage from the Bible. She would then ask us to think seriously about what we had heard—“Silently and seriously, that’s how I want you to think!” she would say. “I’m going to leave you alone with your thoughts, now,” she would tell us ominously—as if our thoughts were capable of driving us over the edge. “I want you to think very hard,” Mrs. Walker would say. Then she’d walk out on us. I think she was a smoker, and she couldn’t allow herself to smoke in front of us. “When I come back,” she’d say, “we’ll talk about it.”
By the time she came back, of course, we’d forgotten everything about whatever it was—because as soon as she left the room, we would fool around with a frenzy. Because being alone with our thoughts was no fun, we would pick up Owen Meany and pass him back and forth, overhead. We managed this while remaining seated in our chairs—that was the challenge of the game. Someone—I forget who started it—would get up, seize Owen, sit back down with him, pass him to the next person, who would pass him on, and so forth. The girls were included in this game; some of the girls were the most enthusiastic about it. Everyone could lift up Owen. We were very careful; we never dropped him. His shirt might become a little rumpled. His necktie was so long, Owen tucked it into his trousers—or else it would have hung to his knees—and his necktie often came untucked; sometimes his change would fall out (in our faces). We always gave him his money back.
If he had his baseball cards with him, they, too, would fall out of his pockets. This made him cross because the cards were alphabetized, or ordered under another system—all the infielders together, maybe. We didn’t know what the system was, but obviously Owen had a system, because when Mrs. Walker came back to the room—when Owen returned to his chair and we passed his nickels and dimes and his baseball cards back to him—he would sit shuffling through the cards with a grim, silent fury.
He was not a good baseball player, but he did have a very small strike zone and as a consequence he was often used as a pinch hitter—not because he ever hit the ball with any authority (in fact, he was instructed never to swing at the ball), but because he could be relied upon to earn a walk, a base on balls. In Little League games he resented this exploitation and once refused to come to bat unless he was allowed to swing at the pitches. But there was no bat small enough for him to swing that didn’t hurl his tiny body after it—that didn’t thump him on the back and knock him out of the batter’s box and flat upon the ground. So, after the humiliation of swinging at a few pitches, and missing them, and whacking himself off his feet, Owen Meany selected that other humiliation of standing motionless and crouched at home plate while the pitcher aimed the ball at Owen’s strike zone—and missed it, almost every time.
Yet Owen loved his baseball cards—and, for some reason, he clearly loved the game of baseball itself, although the game was cruel to him. Opposing pitchers would threaten him. They’d tell him that if he didn’t swing at their pitches, they’d hit him with the ball. “Your head’s bigger than your strike zone, pal,” one pitcher told him. So Owen Meany made his way to first base after being struck by pitches, too.
Once on base, he was a star. No one could run the bases like Owen. If our team could stay at bat long enough, Owen Meany could steal home. He was used as a pinch runner in the late innings, too; pinch runner and pinch hitter Meany—pinch walker Meany, we called him. In the field, he was hopeless. He was afraid of the ball; he shut his eyes when it came anywhere near him. And if by some miracle he managed to catch it, he couldn’t throw it; his hand was too small to get a good grip. But he was no ordinary complainer; if he was self-pitying, his voice was so original in its expression of complaint that he managed to make whining lovable.
In Sunday school, when we held Owen up in the air—especially, in the air!—he protested so uniquely. We tortured him, I think, in order to hear his voice; I used to think his voice came from another planet. Now I’m convinced it was a voice not entirely of this world.
“PUT ME DOWN!” he would say in a strangled, emphatic falsetto. “CUT IT OUT! I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. PUT ME DOWN! YOU ASSHOLES!”
But we just passed him around and around. He grew more fatalistic about it, each time. His body was rigid; he wouldn’t struggle. Once we had him in the air, he folded his arms defiantly on his chest; he scowled at the ceiling. Sometimes Owen grabbed hold of his chair the instant Mrs. Walker left the room; he’d cling like a bird to a swing in its cage, but he was easy to dislod...
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B006VE6TCW
- Publisher : Mariner Books Classics; Reprint edition (March 13, 2012)
- Publication date : March 13, 2012
- Language : English
- File size : 3510 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 1155 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0062205579
- Best Sellers Rank: #24,212 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #23 in Add Audiobook for $3.99 or Less
- #54 in Psychological Literary Fiction
- #61 in Classic Literary Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. He has been nominated for a National Book Award three times-winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. He also received an O. Henry Award, in 1981, for the short story "Interior Space." In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules-a film with seven Academy Award nominations. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
For more information about the author, please visit www.john-irving.com
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book easy to read and enjoyable. They appreciate the memorable characters and their development. The story is emotional and thought-provoking, with a deep sense of spirituality and important themes. Many readers find the humor funny and entertaining. However, some feel the book is too long with overly detailed descriptions and wordiness.
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Customers enjoy the book. They find the character remarkable and admirable. The writing is enjoyable, captivating, humorous, and thought-provoking. The concept is good and the sentences are memorable. Overall, it's a profound, literary novel that makes you feel and think.
"...the musings, the “seemingly nonsense” are all weaved together into a powerful, monumental, and emotional ending, leaving the reader totally wrecked..." Read more
"...Owen is a bit of a misfit, small for his age and brilliant and wise beyond his years...." Read more
"...There is no question that Irving is a brilliant writer. I thoroughly enjoyed The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules...." Read more
"...room, beers in hand, and I felt like I was reading a profound, literary novel with sentences and paragraphs I could really savor...." Read more
Customers enjoy the well-developed characters. They appreciate the narrator's voice and expertise. The book includes scripture, hymns, and meditations.
"...All I knew going in was that this is billed as a phenomenal character study, and the protagonist hits that baseball where it shouldn’t have gone...." Read more
"...It is packed with scripture, hymns, and meditations on the deepest questions and doubts in life...." Read more
"...The narrator is excellent!" Read more
"...While it's a good story with some interesting characters and good scenes, there's just too much heavy handedness in the writing." Read more
Customers find the book heartfelt and thought-provoking. They appreciate the complex human relationships and great characters that span a friendship and a lifetime. The storytelling is excellent, with a personal appeal on several levels. Readers appreciate the genuineness of childhood and the story of sadness, determination, and overcoming growing up.
"...” are all weaved together into a powerful, monumental, and emotional ending, leaving the reader totally wrecked and with enough to think about for..." Read more
"...The scenes set and characters developed when the boys are growing up are interesting...." Read more
"This is John Irving. He is a Master Storyteller. He writes beautifully in the English language....." Read more
"...If you live for a good ending, for a book that gathers its many strands together in a way that will explode your head, this is a book for you...." Read more
Customers find the book thought-provoking and inspiring. They appreciate the spirituality, important themes, and life experiences. The novel is religious without being preachy. Biblical references are found throughout the story.
"...But boy, is it profound and oh, so rewarding...." Read more
"...I mention this only because I feel that this novel is rich with important themes and one's life experiences and personal beliefs play a significant..." Read more
"...I enjoyed the writing a great deal and was able to suspend disbelief and accept the character of Owen Meany as maybe miraculous...." Read more
"...sat in my living room, beers in hand, and I felt like I was reading a profound, literary novel with sentences and paragraphs I could really savor...." Read more
Customers find the book humorous with witty dialogue and scenes of high comedy. They describe it as an entertaining read with good grammar and beautiful prose. The book is described as well-written without fluff or excessive vocabulary.
"...only did this book give me so much to think about, but it also made me laugh louder and longer than any other book I can recall...." Read more
"...The author has a witty way with words that give a tongue-in-cheek humor to a lot of situations and it is something that I truly appreciated...." Read more
"...I laughed until I cried, and I cried with sadness. I purchased both the paperback and the audiobook...." Read more
"...Sometimes the the things they get into are very funny. Some are serious...." Read more
Customers have different views on the writing style. Some find it superb and easy to read, with a perfect narrator. Others find the narration annoying, there is bad language, and the writing complex with lengthy sentences. Overall, opinions are mixed on the wordiness of the book.
"...I enjoyed the writing a great deal and was able to suspend disbelief and accept the character of Owen Meany as maybe miraculous...." Read more
"...There was a purposeful lack of clairty for most of the book about the motivations behind some of his adult choices, vague due to the story arc, and..." Read more
"...But this is a set up, a dry comedy. This novel is written in the first person singular, but the person: Johnny Wheelwright is connected to Owen..." Read more
"...For parents: This book is a robust PG-13. There is a bit of foul language and some adult scenes that, while not pornographic by any means, are plain..." Read more
Customers have different views on the pacing of the book. Some find it masterful and straightforward, with good scenes and an easy transition between past and present. Others feel the book starts out slow and drags in parts.
"...It is nearly 700 pages, it can meander, and it is not action packed. But boy, is it profound and oh, so rewarding...." Read more
"...climactic scene at the end of the book, though it made sense and was dramatic, still went too fast and ended too abruptly for me...." Read more
"...This book is good, although at some points it can come across slow. Another part of this book is that there is religion in it...." Read more
"...John Irving's prose and his pacing are masterful...." Read more
Customers find the book too long. They say it's filled with overly detailed descriptions and that the book could have been shortened.
"...This book was different. Besides its extreme length, it combines various aspects of a novel into one book...." Read more
"...The book could use editing. It is far too long and tedious in several sections...." Read more
"...its length is not all that painful, however; and also that its length is justified...." Read more
"...I finally purchased it. I'll confess I was overwhelmed by its length..." Read more
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A Perfect Book
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 20215 stars
I must start by saying this is by far the most unique book I have ever read! All I knew going in was that this is billed as a phenomenal character study, and the protagonist hits that baseball where it shouldn’t have gone. But Lordy, this tale is far more than that.
The story is narrated by Owen’s best friend, Johnny Wheelwright, who has his own story to tell as well. Owen is an irritating little fella who stands just under 5 feet, is light as a feather, and has a whiny, screamy, baby voice. And what a spitfire he is! For a great portion of this tome I wondered how he was going to come out of this looking good. But gradually I warmed up to him and ultimately fell in love.
Sometimes (OK, a lot of times) I was uncertain where the book was going, and the timeline jumps about. The story, set for the most part in New Hampshire, begins in the early 1950s and moves forward through the years until the mid 1960s. It then hops to the late 80s, catching us up on Johnny’s life. From that point it moves back and forth between the past and the 80s. Throughout all this we wade through quite a few philosophical soliloquys, mainly about the Vietnam war and about religion. But be patient. As the end approaches all the little vignettes, the musings, the “seemingly nonsense” are all weaved together into a powerful, monumental, and emotional ending, leaving the reader totally wrecked and with enough to think about for years to come. I had never read John Irving before, but his works are now square in the middle of my radar. This man is stunningly brilliant!
Not only did this book give me so much to think about, but it also made me laugh louder and longer than any other book I can recall. I always read while eating breakfast and lunch and nearly choked several times while reading the chapters entitled “The Angel”, “The Little Lord Jesus”, and “The Ghost of the Future.” Priceless!
I dreamed about this book. That has never happened before. And how ironic that it was THIS book that was the first I ever dreamt about. You will understand if you read the book.
Do I recommend A Prayer for Owen Meany? Does the sun rise every morning? But you must commit to it. It is nearly 700 pages, it can meander, and it is not action packed. But boy, is it profound and oh, so rewarding. It will without a doubt be on my top ten (or five or three or better) list of all time when I ultimately make my way to the big kindle in the sky.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2015I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
This is one of the mot powerful opening sentences I have ever read in a novel, and it sets the tone for the rest of the novel. I read this book at the behest of two high school friends, Laurie and Ginny. We three live in different parts of the country, have lived very different lives, and likely come at the themes of A Prayer for Owen Meary from very different perspectives. I mention this only because I feel that this novel is rich with important themes and one's life experiences and personal beliefs play a significant role in the interpretation of those themes.
The story is narrated by John Wheelwright from the perspective of his middle-aged self, telling the stories of his youth in Gravesend, New Hampshire and interspersing them with commentary on his present. His stories center on his best friend, the title character Owen Meary. John comes from an old, well-established family, while Owen comes from a working class family in the granite industry... an industry that John's aristocratic grandmother deems to be "dirty."
John, while from a privliged family, has never known his father. His mother referred to John as the product of a "little fling," refusing to disclose the identity of his father to him, or to her mother and sister. Despite the scandal of having a child out of wedlock at that time, she held her head high and was never ashamed. She loved her child and she loved to sing, and she did them both without shame. But then a freak accident takes his mother, an accident that changes Owen, too. It is that accident that causes John to begin to wonder about his father. Owen encourages his quest, insisting that God will show him the answers he seeks.
Owen is a bit of a misfit, small for his age and brilliant and wise beyond his years. There is something about him that commands attention, from his peers and adults alike. He is strong in his faith and feels that he is God's hand on earth. His dialogue is present in all caps, further underlining the idea that Owen is somehow more than human, somehow divine. He constantly reminds John, as he falters in his faith, that faith takes practice and that sometimes he just has to accept that.
The religious themes are prevalent throughout the novel and, at first, this was a bit off-putting for me. I tend to stay away from strongly religiously-themed novel, generally finding them to be more "preachy" than I enjoy. I think your own personal experience/relationship with religion really plays into those themes. I was raised Episcopalian, but I pretty much have eschewed orgainized religion, being more spiritual than religious. So I probably had different feelings and ideas about those themes than others who embrace their faith more readily. But the pressure on Owen to live up to his parents' (and his own) assertations about his destiny is something that I think anyone can have empathy for.
And there is no question that the Army girl still in me had some conflicted feelings about the military/war themes. I had a hard time really feeling for the narrator, outside of his love for Owen. There was a purposeful lack of clairty for most of the book about the motivations behind some of his adult choices, vague due to the story arc, and it led me to believe that John was something/someone other than who he turned out to be. My assumptions, which I think were perhaps intended by the author, led me to dislike the adult version of his character due to my own military experiences. Some of his ideas presented by his adult self, while I understood the reasons behind them, sometimes rubbed me the wrong way. There was also a moment in which Owen decides to dramatically help John try to avoid the draft that also conflicted me. It was a drastic moment, one that was done out of love, but it was the acceptance of Owen's dubious gift by John that bothered me, once again because of my own military experiences. But, then again, the subjects of war and politics are often those of controversy, aren't they?!
My Recommendation: This is a thinking book, not a light read. There are strong themes in this novel, themes that make you question your own thoughts, beliefs, and faith. Yet there are also moments that are suprisingly funny. The author has a witty way with words that give a tongue-in-cheek humor to a lot of situations and it is something that I truly appreciated. I think that this is a book that will continue to reveal more of itself with subsequent readings.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2024I am having trouble writing this review. I have read other reviews and apparently other readers were able to dissect this book better than I could. There is no question that Irving is a brilliant writer. I thoroughly enjoyed The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules. This book was different. Besides its extreme length, it combines various aspects of a novel into one book. There is the coming of age and life in a small town in New England. There is the religious aspect and themes of faith (which is probably the main point of the book). There is the mystery aspect of who is John's father and what will really happen to Owen Meany. And finally, there is the commentary on current events that try to place this novel in real time and place for the reader. I'm not sure that they all worked together well when put into one book. Thus, I don't think that I can give this five stars. I enjoyed the writing a great deal and was able to suspend disbelief and accept the character of Owen Meany as maybe miraculous. But all the religion in the book was hard to get into for me. And though I agreed with much of the political commentary, I'm not sure it fit seamlessly into the story. The character of John, who it the narrator of the story strikes me as annoyingly passive and clueless. A lot of the references and symbolism in the book went obviously over my head. And finally, the climactic scene at the end of the book, though it made sense and was dramatic, still went too fast and ended too abruptly for me. So, there is a lot to like in this book, especially the writing, and a lot to take in. It is up to each reader to decide for themselves (obviously).
Top reviews from other countries
- EliotReviewed in Canada on April 2, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect gift to myself
I wanted to express my thanks for receiving a perfect copy of John Irving's a prayer for Owen Meaney.
It is a pristine copy and it arrived on the date you said it would. Highly satisfactory product and you have complete customer satisfaction as I am over the moon.
I read this book every year so I treated myself to a hard copy, as my other was falling apart and I am very pleased. Thanks for your hard work and ongoing service to readers around the world.
- Donna AC
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azertyReviewed in France on January 4, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars un roman magnifique
Il faut passer la difficulté des premières pages pour s'attacher au personnage d'Owen. Irving de sa plus belle plume ( ici en anglais dans le texte et c'est pas plus mal) nous conte cette belle amitié avec des ingrédients Irvinesque comme la dérision, l'humour, le dramatique. Belle œuvre.
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PaolaReviewed in Italy on February 24, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Bellissimo
Una storia incredibile che regala molti sorrisi, tante riflessioni e qualche lacrima.
La lunghezza lo rende impegnativo ma vale tutte le ore spese a leggerlo
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Cliente de KindleReviewed in Mexico on January 23, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars Un bello libro. It touched me.
A quien sea que crea en Dios. Un Dios más allá de cualquier religión. Y a aquel que como yo dude sobre que relación que tiene El con nosotros.
- SaraReviewed in Japan on November 5, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Good read
It held my interest and read it in about a week.