A Prayer for Owen Meany -- John Irving, Paperback

"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

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick

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.

"Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating, and darkly comic . . . Dickensian in scope . . . Quite stunning and very ambitious." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Brilliantly cinematic . . . Irving shows considerable skill as scene after scene mounts to its moving climax. -- ALFRED KAZIN, New York Times

Author: John Irving
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 04/03/2012
Pages: 656
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.20w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780062204097

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 7.7
Point Value: 42
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 28546 / Prayer for Owen Meany


Review Citation(s):
Entertainment Weekly 05/11/2012 pg. 73
Entertainment Weekly 09/04/2015 pg. 45