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Cover of A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

A Prayer for Owen Meany

  • 544 pages · about 9 hours
  • First published 1989
  • 32 editions

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1 About this book

"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." So begins John Irving's new novel.

In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys - best friends - are playing ina Little League baseball game in Gravesend , New Hampshire; one of the boys hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother. The boy who hit the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen - after that 1953 fould ball - is extraordinary and terrifying. (front flap).

Good for readers who want: friendship and a long read.

  • Psychological fiction
  • Friendship in fiction
  • Friendship
  • 1961-1975 Vietnam War
  • Belief and doubt
  • Mothers
  • Death
  • Male friendship

2 About John Irving

Born 1942

John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt Jr.; March 2, 1942) is an American and Canadian novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of his fourth novel The World According to Garp in 1978.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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