Chase Hackett's Reviews > A Prayer for Owen Meany

This is a fabulous book.

Goosed by PBS’s Great American Read book list, compounded by a strong spousal recommendation, I read this, a book I would very likely never have opened without this confluence. To my amazement, I loved it. I laughed, I got a really serious set of goose bumps on about the second to the last page, and when I looked up at the end, my eyes were stinging with tears.

There’s a great deal of religious hoo-ha in here, and I am the most irreligious person you’re likely to meet. Even so, this book—which asks a lot of the reader in this regard—worked for me completely. I fell crazy in love with the obnoxious, slightly creepy and utterly beautiful character of Owen Meany. He is so marvelously conceived, and so unlike any other character you've ever read, you could almost overlook the other great characters with which Irving populates this world.

I will admit to a slight impatience in the latter half of the book when we start to hear a lot (read: too much) about the grown-up narrator’s frustrations with his job, with his life in exile or with the misdeeds of the Reagan government—the first are peevish and the latter (the misdeeds) seem downright quaint, given the grotesque transgressions of the current administration.

But even with that frustration, this is a truly inspiring book that I will think about for a while.

c.t.h.