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A Prayer for Owen Meany (Modern Library) | 
 enlarge | Author: John Irving
Publisher: Modern Library
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.88
You Save: $10.07 (40%)
New (27) Used (14) Collectible (1) from $9.38
Rating:  1074 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 672
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.8 x 1.4
ISBN: 0679642595
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679642596
Publication Date: June 4, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: R20081114232523H
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Amazon.com Review
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--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 the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous 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 cancel 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'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 Guenter 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
Product Description
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 and terrifying.
A Prayer for Owen Meany was first published in 1989. This Modern Library edition includes a new Introduction by the author.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 95 more reviews...
 my favorite book November 15, 2008
Ralene Gregory (Boise, Idaho)
This is my very favorite book of my life! It is filled with memorable characters and circumstances. Laced with humor even through trials and the Viet Nam war. If you haven't yet read this book - do yourself a favor. It is incredible and you will remember it for the rest of your life!
The Best of Irving November 5, 2008
U's mom (Germany)
What more is there to say about this book? It is an incredible read and I would rate this among my favorites of all time. Owen will be with me for a long time to come. Buy this book, sit back and enjoy the ride.
 "Horrific" "Pretentious" and "Offensive" only begin to describe "Meany" October 10, 2008
A. Otten
0 out of 7 found this review helpful
Not only is this book horrifically offensive to Christianity by comparing an irritating and presumptuously arrogant dwarf to Jesus, but it is also in need of major editing. I won't bore anyone with a description of the plot, since it's one of the most lackluster stories I've ever read. This book meanders in the sections in which the narrator describes his present-day life. Also, it gives endless boring descriptions of characters that nobody cares about. It's all "telling" and no "showing". The imagery is something that a first-grader could have come up with ("the lake was wonderful," "the grass was wonderful," "the pines were wonderful," etc.)
If this book had been written by a rookie writer, it never would have been published. It's only because John Irving's name was on it that it got published. Anyone who thinks it's the best book they've ever read (as many of these reviewers do) sorely needs to get a life. A complete bore, "Owen Meany" isn't worth the wood-sludge that it was printed on.
ABSOLUTE 0/5!!!!!
Great book, beautiful edition! September 21, 2008
Vivian Hartjes (Madrid, Spain)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had bought this book for friends of mine as a wedding gift and was not disappointed! With pain in my heart/hands I had to give the book away as intended - the book is one of my all-time favourites and the introduction by John Irving himself made it even better.
AWESOME September 2, 2008
Melanie A. Hahn (Lafayette, IN USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I LOVE this book. I am an avid reader and a writer, and I'm fairly particular about the fiction I read. This book was amazing. The characters are so clearly drawn that they seem like real people. The plot kept me enthralled till the end. The ending itself surprised me (and I'm hard to surprise). Irving is a great writer; his skill at putting together words made the story move along mostly effortlessly. (Though I agree with one of the other reviews - some of the flashbacks were hard to follow at times.) None of his characters are "perfect," which makes them all the more likeable. Parts of the story are totally hilarious, while other parts are sad -- a lot like life. This is the best book I've read in years - and I've read a LOT of books in the past several years! I recommend it to everyone I know who reads a lot.
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