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A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving, 1989
Random House
672 pp.

In Brief
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. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author

• Birth—March 2, 1942
• Where—Exeter, New Hampshire, USA
• Education—B.A., University of New Hampshire; M.F.A., Iowa    Writers' Workshop
• Currently—Vermont


John Winslow Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. He is the author of nine novels, among them The Hotel New Hampshire, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Son of the Circus. Mr. Irving is married and has three sons. He lives in Toronto and in southern Vermont. (From Random House.)

More (Much more)
When his sons Colin and Brendan were younger, if John Irving couldn't make time to drive them on their field trips, he would turn to his good friend David Calicchio, who was the only other person he trusted as their chauffeur. Irving even purchased an old Checker automobile, famously large and heavy, so that his children would be well protected if they were in an accident. ....That's one of his neuroses. You see it in his books, too."

A passage from The World According to Garp, Irving's 1978 breakout bestseller, says it all: "If Garp could have been granted one vast and naive wish, it would have been that he could make the world safe. For children and for grownups. The world struck Garp as unnecessarily perilous for both."....So it comes as no surprise that the most important acquisition for Irving—whose remarkable writing career spans more than three decades—has not been glory or respectability or wealth, but protection from that perilous world for those around him.

What seems to keep his active mind most fully engaged, day in and day out, is the wrestling match between the inexorability of fate and the deliberate, preventive measures one can take to battle against the chaos that lurks around every corner. This concern, he explains, stems primarily from one thing. "My view of the world," Irving says, "was intrinsically informed by having children and my fear for what happens to them."

"The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable -- some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control," he says.

While so many writers lured to Hollywood don't live up to their potential, Irving found what might well be labeled his greatest success in Tinseltown: For 13 years, he protected The Cider House Rules from Hollywood, eventually winning an Oscar in 1999 for his own screenplay adaptation.

" My life in wrestling was one-eighth talent and seven-eighths discipline. I believe that my life as a writer consists of one-eighth talent and seven-eighths discipline, too." (It's worth noting that this writer who wrestled competitively until he was 34 was voted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992.)

Imitation of Life
If Irving's penchant for mixing outlandish humor with unexpected violence is characteristic, his tendency to include what appear to be thinly disguised biographical details in his novels is a trademark. .... Perhaps that's why so many readers often assume that Irving, an adopted son, is looking for his "real" father -- his novels often feature characters whose fathers or mothers have died or absconded.

Irving's biological father, John Wallace Blunt, divorced Irving's mother, Frances, before John was born. Blunt disappeared from his son's life and went on to become a hero during WWII. And Frances remarried, this time to Colin Irving, a Slavic languages and literature major at Harvard University and a Russian history professor at Philips Exeter Academy. John Wallace Blunt Jr. became John Irving.

But Irving the novelist says that his background isn't what attracts him to [lost father] themes (which are found in ... The World According to Garp, ). Irving says he simply uses those themes for the same reason that Charles Dickens did: because orphans make for good stories.".... For Irving, whose childhood was uneventful and whose parents loved him, the idea of spending a lot of time searching for one's biological roots is pointless....

Second Chances
Irving married Shyla Leary in 1964; the couple was divorced in 1982.... In the summer of 1986, the 44-year-old met Janet Turnbull, a 32-year-old literary agent from Toronto. Although the two didn't see each other again for three months, they corresponded by mail. Their first official date was a case of "love at first sight," Janet says now. "He's very much like the person who would write those books," she says of the man she married in 1987....

In the days before Garp attained bestseller status, Irving told friends and colleagues that if he ever became a self-supporting writer, he would work eight or nine hours a day. But when the opportunity developed, he found himself unable to go the distance.... But shortly after that initial disappointment with his post-Garp work habits, Irving's endurance training kicked in. Like a runner or weight lifter, he increased his stamina, reaching a point where he had trouble turning off his typewriter for the day...."It's been that way ever since."
Book magazine - interview, July/August 2001 (Adapted)


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Critics Say. . .
Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic ... Dickensian in scope .... Quite stunning and very ambitious.
Los Angeles Times Book Review


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 lettersan 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. BOMC main selection.
Publishers Weekly


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.-- Barbara Hoffert.
Library Journal

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Book Club Discussion Questions

1. Though he's portrayed as an instrument of God, Owen Meany causes the death of John's mother. What other deaths was Owen indirectly involved with? Do you find Owen's close relationship with death to support or undermine his miraculous purpose?

2. Owen speaks and writes in capital letters, emphasizing the potency of his strange voice. At the academy, he is even referred to as the Voice. Why is Owen's voice so important? What other occasions can you think of in which Owen's voice played an especially mean-ingful role?

3. Reverend Merrill always speaks of faith in tandem with doubt. Do you believe that one can exist without the other or that one strengthens the other? Was your opinion about Merrill's views on faith and doubt affected by the revelation of his relationship to John Wheelwright?

4. Merrill experiences a bogus miracle and resurgence of faith when John stages his mother's dressmaker dummy outside the church. Later, John's involvement in Owen's rescue of the Vietnamese children spurs John's own faith: "I am a Christian because of Owen Meany, " he says. Do you think the genuineness of Owen's miracle makes the birth of John's faith more valid than the faith engendered by Merrill's bogus miracle?

5. The Meanys claim that, like Jesus, Owen was the product of a vir-gin birth. Owen dislikes the Catholic Church for turning away his parents, but Owen himself makes the Meanys leave the Christmas Pageant. Name other instances when Owen's feelings toward his family seem conflicted. Do you think Owen ever considers himself Christlike?

6. An observer necessary to the Christmas Pageant but seldom an active participant, John plays Josephto Owen's baby Jesus. John refers to himself on other occasions as "just a Joseph." Do you see John's role as Joseph-like throughout the story? Are there other biblical characters with whom you identify John?

7. Did Irving's references to the armless Indian and the pawless armadillo prepare you for Owen's sacrifice? What other clues did Irving give about Owen's final heroic scene?

8. Throughout the novel, John gives hints to the forthcoming action, adding, "As you shall see." Did you find this to be an effective way to keep you reading and engaged in the story?

9. Owen Meany taught John that "Any good book is always in motion--from the general to the specific, from the particular to the whole and back again." Do you think Irving followed his own recipe for a good book? Supply examples in support of your position.

10. Given John's dislike of Gravesend Academy, which expelled Owen, did you find it interesting that John later taught at an academy in Toronto? In what other ways does John, as an adult, embrace issues or events that he was indifferent or hostile to as an adolescent?

11. John assists Owen in rescuing the children, but John always plays the supporting part in Owen's adventures. Based on the scenes in Toronto in the 1980s, do you think John ever escaped his support-ing role? How do you think John's retained virginity reflects on his sense of self?

12. Did your feelings about the U. S. involvement in Vietnam change after reading Irving's portrayal of the peace movement, the draft dodgers, and Owen's involvement in the army? Were you surprised by Owen's efforts to get to Vietnam?

13. John's reactions to and obsession with the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s reflect his position as neither a true Canadian nor a true American. Do you think that non-Americans have a clearer vision of the machinations and deceptions within American politics? What did John's focus on American politics tell you about his adult character?

14. Irving frequently foreshadows tragedy; for example, hailstones hit John's mother on the head during her wedding day, providing a glimpse of her later death by a baseball. What other events does Irving foreshadow?

15. Several reviews call A Prayer for Owen Meany "Dickensian, " and Irving himself incorporates scenes from Dickens in the story. In what ways does Irving's writing remind you of Dickens's? What other writers would you compare Irving to?
(Questions issued by publisher.)