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Irving John A Prayer for Owen Meany ISBN 13: 9780552993692

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Prayer for Owen Meany

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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

From the Publisher:
I have been a voracious reader since childhood, and while I've read and loved many, many books, I can honestly say that A Prayer for Owen Meany is my all-time favorite! It is such an extraordinarily funny, moving and heartbreaking story and then ending is the best and most satisfying one I've ever read. The highlight of my first year working for Ballantine Books was attending a reading John Irving gave for the paperback publication. Owen Meany has a very memorable voice when you read the book, so you can imagine how exciting it was for me to hear my favorite author read my favorite book and DO THE VOICE OF OWEN MEANY!

M. Coolman
Ballantine Publicity

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  • PublisherBLACK SWAN
  • Publication date1990
  • ISBN 10 0552993697
  • ISBN 13 9780552993692
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages720
  • Rating

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9780062204097: A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780062204097
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  • 9780062299567: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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  • 9780062284853: A Prayer for Owen Meany: Deluxe Modern Classic

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  • 9781613839829: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers.'A work of genius' Independent'Marvellously funny . . . What better entertainment is there than a serious book which makes you laugh?' Spectator'If you care about something you have to protect it. If you're lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.'Summer, 1953. In the small town of Gravesend, New Hampshire, eleven-year-old John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany are playing in a Little League baseball game. When Owen hits a foul ball which kills John's mother, their lives are changed in an instant.It is dismissed as a tragic accident but Owen disagrees. He believes that he is God's instrument, put on Earth for a higher purpose. And as the boys come into adulthood to the background of the Vietnam War, a series of remarkable events show that perhaps Owen's divine plan was not imagined after all.Discover the funny yet poignant classic by the bestselling author of The World According to Garp.'So extraordinary, so original, and so enriching' Stephen King, The Washington Post'May justly join the classic American list' Anthony Burgess, Observer Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen doesn't believe in accidents; he believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is both extraordinary and terrifying. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780552993692

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Book Description Condition: New. 1990. 01st Edition. Paperback. Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen doesn't believe in accidents; he believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is both extraordinary and terrifying. Num Pages: 720 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 198 x 129 x 41. Weight in Grams: 520. . . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780552993692

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