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Dec 17, 2009

Marty rated it:

A long time ago, I came across a story that my grandmother recommended. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I definitely hadn’t expected to read what would become my favorite book. The story begins as many do, giving background on the area that will provide the setting for our tale, a history as reference, but quickly catches up with the main characters and the supporting cast. And we quickly learn of Johnny and Owen Meany, two friends who forge an eternal bond despite their obvious mismatches - More...

2 comments like (37 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jason rated it:

I've been on a huge John Irving kick recently, and man, am I glad I didn't start with this book because I might have aborted the whole thing before I had a chance to read some of his better works.

This one just didn't do it for me. Whereas I left other Irving novels feeling recharged and alive, I left this one pissed off and ready to drink cheap tequila until I blacked out and woke up in a new world where there are no books or stories or any sort of entertainment derived from the writ More...

17 comments like (32 people liked it)

Nov 30, 2010

Nathan rated it:

I gave this book three stars because I figure that's the average of five stars and one star. Some of the things about this book were great; others were really terrible.

Irving's strong-point is definitely his ability to draw interesting characters in vivid--sometimes painful--detail. Owen, of course, is the central and most interesting character. He's a little runt of a boy with a bizarre voice, a sarcastic wit, an iron will, and an unwavering faith in God and in the fact that he i More...

5 comments like (19 people liked it)

Aug 31, 2011

Noce rated it:

Come un disegno di Escher

Avvertenze.

Prima di iniziare questo romanzo, siete pregati di munirvi del seguente Book-kit:

-Un vasto, quanto variegato campionario di espressioni facciali, da sfoggiare di pari passo con le molteplici emozioni di queste quasi 600 pagine. C'è di tutto, ma proprio tutto; dalla faccia angosciata a quella incredula, da quella divertita a quella intimamente commossa, da quella riflessiva a quella estasiata, e così via.

- G More...

3 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Ashley rated it:

a whole-hearted kind of irving novel. my irving kick started with the cider house rules and burned quickly through garp (good to start with the classics), a widow for one year (didn't like very much), hotel new hampshire, and then owen meany. irving has a kind of roundness and soulfulness on the one hand that really brings you into the characters. they have full and complex voices and sometimes nearly inscrutable relationships. hardly any other authors i can think of have such a light touch that More...

0 comments like (19 people liked it)

Mar 29, 2008

Penny rated it:

I've been giving too many four star reviews lately, so thought I'd mix it up with a review of a book I have conflicted feelings about. Thus, two stars for Owen Meany. Which, by the way, is my favorite of the John Irving novels I've read. Not a fan.

I enjoyed many elements of Owen Meany as I read it. Liked the narrator's family (mother, grandmother, cousins) and the business with the stuffed armadillo. Liked his description of his school days, and thought that the section in which Owe More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Oct 07, 2011

Jacob rated it:

The World According to Garp is one of my favorite books, and my favorite of John Irving's books as well. It was also my first Irving novel. I first read it in 2006, and it was nearly a year before I worked up the courage to read more of Irving's work. Garp was such a good novel, I was worried that anything else wouldn't measure up to it--or it would, and Garp would suddenly pale in comparison to something even better. I'm not sure which possibility scared me more.

It turned out to More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2011

Nick rated it:

I'm short on time for this review, but man, this is the closest thing to "a perfect story" as anything I've ever read.

***I'm back a few days later to edit my review, because I can't stop thinking about this book. It might be my favorite. I might be in love with this story. As the first sentence of the story starts out, "I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice...", well, I am, too.

***SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON IN THE REVEIW***

I t More...

3 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2008

Tom rated it:

I'm sure you can read a million reviews about this book. It seems to be many people's favorite. Let me just say that I have read 5 or 6 John Irving books, and this is the only one that is much more than a good story. About 10 years ago I was assisting a photography class for adults, and one of the particpants, a minister, saw that I was reading this book. He said that A prayer for Owen Meany had more to say about the nature of God than anything he had ever read. We had a fabulous conversation ab More...

1 comment like (23 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2011

Marco rated it:

Questo è - è stato - il mio primo incontro con Irving. Occorre partire da zero per analizzarlo come si deve.

'Un giorno dell'estate 1953, con una palla lanciata durante una partita di baseball, Owen Meany uccide per sbaglio l'adorata madre del suo più caro compagno di giochi, John Wheelwright.'
Sembra questa (le prime tre righe di trama) la premessa per una storia diversa da quello che poi si rivelerà essere. Ci immaginiamo una difficoltà di compresione tra i due amici in seguito More...

4 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 26, 2010

Jil rated it:

Much like Garcia Marquez's Vivir Para Contarlo, this book took FOREVER, and I sometimes felt embarrassed to have been carrying it around for weeks. I felt obligated to apologize to people: "I swear I'm a fast reader! I've just had a lot of work to do, and... this fucking thing is 550 pages!"

Somehow, though, it never felt that long. It never felt tedious, I mean; it felt long in the sense that it seemed I had known Owen and Johnny forever. It felt long in that the passage o More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Apr 20, 2010

Skylar rated it:

This is a well written book, with unique characters, and it was a "good read," but I don't think I can say I actually liked it. A Prayer for Owen Meany, despite the narrator's insistence that the Resurrection is the heart of Christianity, presents a joyless Christianity. Christ said, "I have come to give you life, and to give it more abundantly," yet no Christian in this story seems to have an "abundant" life.

I noticed that all of the characters who are More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 08, 2008

Jenni rated it:

I'm reading this again after several years and I have to say it's still a great story. Last time I was in my late teens, and now I can appreciate the craft of his storytelling on a different level. First off, how he manipulates time, and does it so seamlessly is just amazing. One can learn a great deal about easing in and out of time periods from Irving because you barely notice the time shifts, even though they can be as large as a decade between paragraphs. For the first 100 or so pages, he mo More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 23, 2009

Choupette rated it:

I liked this book. I didn't find it powerful, or moving - it wasn't one of those books that seemed to have singled me out at a crowded party, taken me to a quiet bedroom and stolen my literary virginity - but I enjoyed it. It never dragged, was never boring, always entertaining, often good for a laugh... but I don't think I quite got it.

I was waiting for something more spectacular to happen at the end. That there was all this build up just for him to do something that I won't spoil h More...

8 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 29, 2009

Emma rated it:

This is quite possibly my favorite book of all time. I think that it is Irving at his best. There are events set out early on in the book that tie back in at the end beautifully. I finished this book on the bus from Mont st. Michelle and cried my eyes out. The characters were just believable enough and yet still stretched the bounds of what you would expect. I hope that someday I find a stuffed armadillo...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2006

Courtney rated it:

Irving's books are filled with oddly endearing characters and off-center humor. Owen Meany is a little person with a strange voice who believes he is the instrument of God after he kills his friend's mom with a baseball. Often hilarious and poignant, this is a fun, engrossing read.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 26, 2011

Sandra aka Sleo rated it:

I'd give it more than 5 stars if I could. It's going in my 'favorites' pile. I don't know when I've read a book with so much humor, tragedy, love, truth, love, and plain old deep understanding of human nature.

I listened to this book and it's one of the few I've listened to that I didn't 'zone out', fall asleep, get bored, or whatever. There are parts, thankfully, that are less intense, but they didn't bore me. At times I was weeping and laughing out loud at the same time. Drove my More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 03, 2011

Antof9 rated it:

The review I wrote on BookCrossing, 5 months after I read it: The biggest problem in writing a journal entry for this book is that I read it about 6 months ago. *sigh* I had every intention of writing a journal entry right away, and even started one once, but had computer problems, and lost it before I ever saved. That was a good entry, too.

So.. . I did and didn't like this book. I'd love to talk to John Irving about it. Is this true? Quasi-true? Did he know someone sort of l More...

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 21, 2008

Kerfe rated it:

The characters and stories in this book linger. It's messy with contradiction. Religion, faith and doubt, politics, war, life and death, truth, sex, family, education, America, the nature of love and friendship, growing up (or not)--all bases are covered, denied, embraced, refused, embellished and stripped bare.

Moving between the narrator John Wheelwright's present, during the Reagan administration, and his youth in the 50's and 60's in a small New Hampshire town, the central charac More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2007

Kirstie rated it:

I have a secret to tell...I wasn't always a huge book reader. I grew up in a family of avid readers and it was always joked that my mom was born with a book in her hand. But, for me, when I was in high school, I chose to stick to shorter novels like Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar and anything over 500 pages seemed just way too daunting. I remember thinking that for a long time picking up A Prayer For Owen Meany, which is easily Irving's best in the four of his I've read (Hotel New Hampsh More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Sarah rated it:

I think most people want to believe that their actions are important and have meaning, but only so far as this belief doesn’t make them feel guilty or require real sacrifice. But to truly see the bigger picture… to see yourself as an irreplaceable and integral part of a larger network affecting the world is terrifying because then you're personally accountable. And to act within that knowledge and for the true benefit of others requires real courage and faith.

I think Owen Meany does More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Anne rated it:

I unfortunately picked up this book for the first time as I was leaving for a vacation at my friend's house... for her birthday and Christmas. And I couldn't put it down. I was an appalling house guest, and a worse celebrator. And I don't really regret it, because it marked a moment in time, a turning point for me. I've said this before. I've been sort of struggling with a very personal theory about what I love best in fiction. I think it has something to do with the fact that wonderful fi More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 06, 2008

Suzanne rated it:

I had read many Irving books but not this one until my sister recommended it. I agreed with her assessment that it is an extraordinarily fine piece of literature. What is just so "Irving" is his unpredictability in developing a character. He continues to write about life in a New England prep school yet finds a way to tell a story not yet told. The townies vs the preppies has been done before but not Owen the dwarf who accidently kills someone, and plays baby Jesus in the school Ch More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2008

Darby rated it:

This is probably my all-time favorite. I've teach it in class from time to time, which is probably a mistake, as there are always students who feel the need to criticize it, something no one should do in my prescense! This book focuses on one of my favorite themes in literature: the power of that which we cannot see. In this case, the invisible power is faith - namely, Owen's faith in God. I'm not really a religious person at all, but this book was life-changing for me.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Ben rated it:

This book is special. It's full of unique and interesting characters, but what made it really stand out for me was the way it made me laugh. Never before, and not since, have I laughed as often or as loudly while reading a book.

5 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Ibtisam helen rated it:

This may well be my favorite book of all time. I have never laughed or cried so hard reading a book. Hoping to check out more works by Irving in the near future....

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jun 25, 2008

Nicole rated it:

Might easily be the best book ever...Oh, Owen!

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 09, 2009

J rated it:

I've always had a tentative relationship with my religion. Like many, I take comfort in established, ritualized practices. On the other hand, I have a tough time with some of what I consider to be loopy mandates outlined by the Catholic Catechism.

One aspect about, A Prayer for Owen Meany definitely touched on Faith; how I reconcile the difference between knowing that G_d exists; and believing that his word is what has been faithfully communicated through the Bible.

Couple More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 05, 2008

Shep rated it:

So I found this book hard to get into, but it wasn't bad enough to stop. I was reading the hardback though, and they look really big. I kept thinking, all this of this? The thing is, the middle really picked up.

My comments are this. There is not a lot of poesy in Irving's workaday prose. He tells stories, and creates characters and worlds. These things are pretty good, although the characters tend slightly toward charicactures, and the stories are a bit larger than life. Thi More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 24, 2008

Melissa rated it:

If I have to pick a "favorite book," of all time, it's a toss-up between Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and A Prayer for Owen Meany.

I'm not a religious individual--I was raised loosely "Christian," but I gave up my initial hope of Heaven upon the startling revelation, in high school, that I was gay. This book, for better or worse, renewed my faith in God.

Irving is a master storyteller. Anyone who's read "The Wo More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)