A Prayer for Owen Meany (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: John Irving
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman
- Subjects: 1950’s, Maturation or coming of age, Teaching or teachers, 1960’s, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Exile or expatriates, Virginity or virgins, 1980’s, New England, New Hampshire, Vietnam War, Single parents or single-parent families, Death or dying, Canada or Canadians, Faith, Amputation, amputees, or prosthetics, Miracles, Citizenship, Dwarfs
- Locales: Toronto, Canada, Gravesend, NH
America, according to John Irving in this novel, has been declining morally for the past thirty years, and there is an ever-increasing abundance of American pastimes which give “good disaster.” So Irving gives his readers--or, at least, gives John Wheelwright, the narrator of this strange novel--a new messiah, Owen Meany. Meany, who believes he is God’s instrument, is literally a pip-squeak: his classmates pass him back and forth over their heads when the teacher is out of the room, and his voice is tiny, mouselike, though what he teaches Wheelwright and prophesies with that voice...
[The entire page is 614 words long]
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