A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving
RG Gold Medal 2000
2nd May 2000 at Sam's House
Synopsis
Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball
game in New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best
friend's mother. Owen does not believe in accidents and believes
he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953
foul is both extraordinary and terrifying.
Published reviews
Like all of Irving's novels, A Prayer for Owen Meany
seems both more and less than one book. It cannot decide whether
to be a folksy Bildungsroman set in New Hampshire, a full-scale
Christian/Freudian allegory, or a commentary on American politics.
The reminiscences of Owen and John's childhood are so long
and so lacking in comic or psychological punch that one would
be hard-pressed to tolerate them from a friend. From the unappealing
first-person narrator they are unspeakably tedious. And since
that narrator is quite obviously Irving's shadow, we might
lay a certain self-indulgence at the author's door. But, most
irritatingly, the tone ... oscillates between 1960s ranting
and a sentimentalized Proust; its 543 pages have all the subtlety
of a wholegrain madeleine.
The Times Literary Supplement
Irving is particularly good at rendering the dynamics of
things--he has a Dickensian ability to juxtapose and animate
unpromising objects into strangely perverse, potentially ludicrous
or malign life. ... The most attractive parts of this book
... don't ask to be considered in terms of irony or sentimentality;
they may be appreciated and enjoyed for the humorously solid
things they are. ... As for the novel's religious message,
it doesn't have one except that you'd better believe that
this wonderful little Owen guy was indeed the instrument of
God, since our narrator does. . . . [One can compare Irving],
if not to Dickens, at least to
the Twain of Tom Sawyer, or
to Booth Tarkington, or to Salinger, all writers of boy's
books, and no bad company in which to find oneself.
The New Republic
Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic ... Dickensian
in scope .... Quite stunning and very ambitious.
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Diminutive Owen Meaney, the social outcast with the high,
pinched voice, has an enormous influence on his friend Johnny
Wheelwright--not least because the only baseball Owen ever
hits causes the death of Johnny's mother. But as Johnny claims,
"Owen gave me more than he ever took from me. . . . What did
he ever say that wasn't right?" Spookily prescient, convinced
that he is an instrument of God, Owen intimidates child and
adult alike. Why Johnny "is a Christian because of Owen Meaney"
is the novel's central mystery but not its only one: Who,
for instance, was Johnny's father? Untangling these knots,
the adult Johnny pauses to consider his religious convictions
and distaste of American politics in passages that are neither
especially persuasive nor effectively integrated into the
book. And though Owen is a compelling presence, his power
over others is not entirely convincing. Still, readers will
be drawn in by the story of the boys' friendship and by the
desire to see some resolution to Johnny's mysteries.
Library Journal
How interesting does John Irving make this material? Nowhere
do we find the power, vision, or humor that would merit a
comparison with Dickens.
The Christian theme is obviously central to the novel, yet
one is left in some doubt how it is to be taken. A Prayer
for Owen Meany is steeped in the ritual andpractice of
mainline Protestantism. ... Yet what the novel conveys is
a sense of religiosity, rather than religion, of the miraculous
rather than the spiritual. It is hard to give imaginative
credence to Owen's bizarre conviction without more to go on
than the narrator's reporting of his words and actions, especially
since the narrator himself does not inspire total confidence.
Too often the Christian elements seem merely another aspect
of the novel's sensationalism.
The New York Review of Books
The essence of A Prayer for Owen Meany ... is that
though we cannot understand Owen Meany's life and death in
'ordinary,' rational terms, we are expected to understand
both as a miracle. My problem is that John Irving's obvious
excitement with all this does not translate convincingly as
fiction. It is just pushed at us enthusiastically. ... Our
land is in such a state that amiracle man is a necessary symbol
of a new kind of thinking among us. Mr Irving shows considerable
skill as scene after scene mounts to its moving climax. But
the thinking behind it all seems juvenile, preppy, is much
too pleased with itself. There is something appropriate in
the fact that so much of the book takes place in and around
a New England academy. . . . There is lots and lots of talk
about 'religion' in this book. John Irving is a talented man
and politically more outspoken than most of us, but the talk
is on a level with the examples Mr Irving gives of American
superficiality, shoddiness, frivolity.
The New York Times Book Review
Irving's inventive stamina and virtuosity scarcely disguise
his indignation about the way of the world, particularly about
the manner in which US foreign policy has been conducted in
the past 25 years. ... Despite its theological proppings,
A Prayer for Owen Meany is a fable of political predestination.
As usual, Irving delivers a boisterous cast, a spirited story
line and a quality of prose that is frequently underestimated
even by his admirers. On theother hand, the novel invites
trespass by symbol hunters. ... To get lost in critical rummage
would be to miss the point. Irving's litany of error and folly
may strike some as too righteous; but it is effective.
Time
Irving's storytelling skills have gone seriously astray
in this contrived, preachy, tedious tale of the eponymous
Owen Meany, a latter-day prophet and Christ-like figure who
dies a martyr after having inspired true Christian belief
in the narrator, Johnny Wheelwright. The boys grow up close
friends in a small New Hampshire town, where Owen's loutish
parents own a quarry and where the fatherless Johnny, whose
beloved mother never reveals the secret of his paternity,
becomes an orphan at age 11 when a foul ball hit by Owen in
a Little League game strikes his mother on the head, killing
her instantly. The tragedy notwithstanding, Owen and Johnny
cleave to a friendship sealed when Owen uses desperate means
to keep Johnny from going to Vietnam, and brought to its apotheosis
when Johnny is present at the death Owen has seen prefigured
in a vision. Despite the overworked theme of a boy's best
friend causing his mother's injury or death (one thinks immediately
of Robertson Davies and Nancy Willard),
the plot might have been workable had not Irving made Owen
a caricature: Owen is, all his life, so tiny he can be lifted
with one hand; he is "mortally cute", and he has a "cartoon
voice" because he must shout through his nose, which Irving
conveys by printing all of Owen's dialogue in capital letters,
an irritating device that immediately sets the reader's teeth
on edge. Then too, the author's portentously dramatic foreshadowing,
which has worked well in his previous books, is here sadly
overdone and excessively melodramatic. On the plus side, Irving
is convincing in his appraisal of the tragedy of Vietnam and
in his religious philosophizing, in which he distinguishes
the true elements of faith. But that is not enough to save
the meandering narrative. Owen is not the only one to hit
a foul ball in this novel, which is too "mortally cute" for
its own good.
Publishers Weekly
Our comments
We all loved this book, even though not all of us finished
it.
It has taken us a while to get around to reading it. Sam
kept vetoing it on the grounds that she didn't like the author's
other work... except that she thought we were talking about
John Updike and not John Irving. So eight years later, we
finally get to read this book. [Sam's confusion runs deep
- she looked for the book under U in the bookshop!]
John Irving's writing is very moving - funny and sad. Having
said many times before that I will finish a book after our
meeting - this time I will. The plot drives you along and
you care about the wonderful characters.
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