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A deluxe collector's edition of John Irving's beloved A Prayer for Owen Meany—a coming-of-age tale that ranks among the most cherished American classics, including To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye.
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.
What book was the subject of your most memorable book club discussion?
William Kent Kruger's "Ordinary Grace". Also "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving & "Small Great Things" by Jodi Picolt.
-Carol_Ann_Robb
What’s the last book you purchased? Why did you select it? Paperback, hardback or ebook?
Queen Esther by John Irving in hard cover. It was an impulse item because A Prayer for Owen Meany is in a class all by itself and I was hoping for another book of that caliber. (I know it's not likely, but I couldn't resist.)
-Judith_V
What's your favorite banned book?
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) & A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
-Carol_Ann_Robb
How has your reading changed as you've gotten older, if at all?
...hem. Things like Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier and The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I know when I finish these I will find others on my shelves that I'll want to go back to.
-Linda_O_donnell
"A remarkable novel... . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation in the somehow exhausted world of late twentieth-century fiction—it is an amazingly brave piece of work ... so extraordinary, so original, and so enriching... . Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] richly textured and carefully wrought world." —Washington Post
"The magic of A Prayer for Owen Meany is that it forces us into a confrontation with our own carapaces of skepticism ... It is a brave and subtly disturbing affirmation of faith, and it is all the more remarkable for its engagement with the deepest questions, the most painful mysteries of our lives." —Los Angeles Times
This information about A Prayer for Owen Meany was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
John Winslow Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His novels include The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Son of the Circus, and Last Night In Twisted River. Irving is married and has three sons; he lives in Toronto and in southern Vermont.
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