A Prayer for Owen Meany (Modern Library)
by John Irving
List Price:
Our Price: $15.31
You Save: $10.69 (41%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $6.39 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: John IrvingEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-06-04
ISBN: 0679642595
Number of pages: 672
Publisher: Modern Library
Summary of A Prayer for Owen Meany (Modern Library)
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.
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 Günter 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
Sports Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Sports Books
Ruffiansby Tim Green
Grand Central Publishing; Published: 1999-12-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $142.84
Hot Moneyby Dick Francis
Berkley; Published: 2010-07-06; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.80
Price in other shops:
Wild Pitchby Mike Lupica
Putnam Adult; Published: 2002-09-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.74
Price in other shops:
The Franchise Babe: A Novelby Dan Jenkins
The Booklegger; Doubleday; Published: 2008-06-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $0.15
Price in other shops:
Dead Solid Perfectby Dan Jenkins
Anchor; Published: 2000-04-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.28
Price in other shops:
The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist: A Novelby Dan Jenkins
Doubleday; Published: 2001-08-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.95
Price in other shops:
Danger Zone (Harlequin NASCAR)by Debra Webb
Harlequin; Published: 2007-02-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.98
Price in other shops:
The Inheritance (Jan Hardy Series)by Jenny Pitman
Macmillan UK; Published: 2006-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.05
Price in other shops:
Barney Polan's Game (Harvest Book)by Charley Rosen
Mariner Books; Published: 1999-03-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.20
Price in other shops:
All The Stars Came Out That Nightby Kevin King
Dutton Adult; Published: 2005-09-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.79
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
In One Person: A Novelby John Irving
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2012-05-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.13
Price in other shops:
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Lifeby Donald Miller
Thomas Nelson; Published: 2009-09-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.95
Price in other shops:
The Hotel New Hampshire (Ballantine Reader's Circle)by John Irving
Ballantine Books; Published: 1997-06-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.96
Price in other shops:
Much Ado About Nothing (Dover Thrift Editions)by William Shakespeare
Dover Publications; Dover Publications; Published: 1994-10-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachiaby Dennis Covington
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1996-03-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.10
Price in other shops:
A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)by John Irving
Ballantine Books; Published: 1997-06-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.18
Price in other shops:
The Cider House Rules: A Novel (Modern Library)by John Irving
Modern Library; Published: 1999-11-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.43
Price in other shops:
The World According to Garp (Modern Library)by John Irving
Modern Library; Published: 1998-04-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.41
Price in other shops:
My Name Is Asher Levby Chaim Potok
Anchor; Published: 2003-03-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops:
The Cider House Rulesby John Irving
Ballantine Books; Published: 1997-06-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.98
Price in other shops: