A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving > Reviews > A Prayer For Owen Meany

Author's product rating:   

Would you listen to it again?	Absolutely
Story	Outstanding
Characters	Outstanding
Listenability	Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!
How does it compare to similar audio books?	Excellent
How does it compare to audio works by the same author?	Excellent

Advantages:	see op
Disadvantages:	see op

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Nope, no silly op titles. I couldn't do that to my all-time favourite book; and it took me twenty one years to find an all-time favourite. It was, of course, inevitable, that with a user name like ruth_cole (A Widow For One Year), I would write an op about an Irving book. Here it is.

The best place to start would probably be with the plot. Since this is a book that starts in the fifties and moves through to the Reagan administration, via Vietnam, it's probably best to just give you the kind of information you get in the blurb.

Owen Meany is the best friend of Johnny Wheelwright. When they are both 11 years old, Owen hits a baseball in a Little League game that kills Johnny's mother. Owen is convinced: GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS, I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT. Why the capitals? I'll explain in a minute. The story begins with Johnny explaining that he is a Christian because of Owen Meany, but this story isn't exactly about religion. The themes that run through it are conveniently alliterative: faith, fate and family.

Owen is a unique, breathtaking feat of the imagination. He is tiny, with a singular voice caused by some sort of defect in his larynx, which gives him an unsettling falsetto; for that reason, all Owen's dialogue is written in capitals. Later, Owen adopts capitals as his writing style. From the start, it is given that Owen is head and shoulders above the crowd, despite his unfortunate size. The intense faith Irving invests Owen with at times radiates off the page... you don't have to believe a thing to feel the power of his faith and this is the point. Johnny- an agnostic- is shocked into faith by the amazing and tragic events of his friend's life, but he still has his doubts about God's actions. This is not about organised religion. In fact, when Johnny says he is a Christian because of Owen Meany, you suspect he is a Meanyite, worshipping indirectly. Owen is a difficult character- one of the great things about Irving's creation, which makes a bizarre person like Owen so acceptably realistic, is that he is at times eminently dislikable. He is bright, but superior, loving but frustrating, he knows too much and not enough at the same time. He believes he is the way he is for a purpose, but can't figure that purpose out, making him believably human.

Johnny serves the purpose of putting us in the story with all our naivety and nervous relationship with Owen. His background couldn't be more different than Owen's. Owen is the heir of an almost useless granite quarry, Johnny is the descendant of one of Gravesend, New Hampshire's founding fathers. Like many of Irving's books, this is set firmly in New England, rarely leaving the familiar domain of a town presided over by a boy's private academy (of a Garp-like persuasion). The setting is clearly the one of Irving's childhood, and since his (adoptive, I believe) grandmother always called him Johnny, it doesn't take a genius to make a vaguely autobiographical link. Irving tends to avoid these, thinking it is his job to make up stories, but I think it is no coincidence that his best book might be the one that allows most of himself in. Anyway, Johnny Wheelwright is unique in his own way- the result of a "fling" his beautiful, talented mother Tabitha had with a man on the Boston and Maine railroad- a man who's identity she never reveals before her death, leaving Johnny and Owen trying to find his father, although Johnny is rather half-hearted about the search, and Owen warns him he may be disappointed. As a substitute, there is his mother's new husband, Dan Needham, who is the archetypal perfect dad, a drama teacher who is calm and considerate. He also has his matriarchal grandmother, the wonderful, snobbish but funny Harriet Wheelwright. Owen has a bizarre family, a mother apparently in a state of near-catatonia, and a jovial, but strange father. Both imbue Owen with a fear and dislike of Catholicism, caused by the OUTRAGE, as Owen explains it that the church committed against them. This is later explained in the revelation of a shocking Meany family secret. Irving is a great worshipper of Dickens, and I sometimes wondered if the names he gives his characters are in a Dickensian tradition- Meany for the deceptively simple and humble, Wheelwright- the makers of wheels?- for those who think themselves the cornerstone of civilisation. Also luckless, troubled Hester (see next paragraph), as we are constantly reminded, rhymes so effortlessly with 'molester'...

Also in the mix of unforgettable characters are a bunch of violent and thrilling cousins of Johnny's, headed by the aforementioned Hester Eastman, an uncomfortably sexual and confused creation (not unlike Cider House's Melony) who's life is more than turned upside-down by Owen.

Aside from Johnny and Owen, who have one of those wonderful platonic love affairs of literature, the other characters drift in and out, as the book's timeline is disrupted, especially towards the end. The bulk of it is about Owen and Johnny's early adolescence, and the fateful baseball incident, but it is interspersed with Johnny's diary entries in Toronto, where he is now based, as an English teacher. About two-thirds of the way through, the pace picks up, racing through Owen's maturity, the Vietnam war, and the inexorable ending. The narrative is mostly the better for this mix of times and places. Johnny gives us military history and more recent political commentary in his little extracts, although towards the end, waiting to see how Owen's story works itself out, the tendency to race through the Canadian bits is there. The style of the book is teasing, keeping you hooked and knocking you back.

It is also, at times, downright hilarious. In the run up to a particularly warped Christmas nativity in the book I got some very concerned looks on the tube. Some of Owen's dialogue is the kind of thing everyone wishes they could come up with off the top of their heads, and some of the pranks he pulls in an ongoing war with the new headmaster of his school during his teenage years are very funny indeed. Owen is in a constant state of debate with authority members in their society- the religious leaders and the school leaders over his ethical beliefs and you are subtly invited by Irving to think, without ever realising it. You will hate Barb Wiggin, the Rector Wiggin's abrasive wife, also the new headmaster, Randy White and the mother of another student, Larry Lish, who has a viciously hilarious and a little heartbreaking encounter with Owen over his hero John F. Kennedy and a certain indiscretion with Marilyn Monroe... Like every comedy, the laughter is all the more welcome because it is interspersed with tragedy. I cried more than once reading this book, and the ending stayed with me for several days after I finshed it- it was a year before I re-read it, since I found it powerful enough to stay with me; when I did choose to reread it, it was nostalgic fondness and awe that prompted it.

One of the things I remembered best was how easy it was for Irving to persuade me of certain miraculous events in the book. Perhaps because Johnny is so utterly normal his belief is mirrored in us as we read. Every really absorbing book has a character through whose eyes we see it, and so much is hidden from Johnny- his mother's secret life, and, to an extent, Owen's - that you put yourself very much in his place; after all, how well do we know the people that we know? How much do we know about our parents before what we can remember?

What might you not like about this book? Irving does tend to make repeated sexual references (when shown the manuscript for A Widow For One Year his mother's reaction was "Not another dildo, John?"), which may be hard for some. And there are some squeamish moments, which I can't mention as it would ruin the plot, but since this isn't Garp, they are few. Irving's writing style is simple but effective, and he is an enthusiastic storyteller. The book is quite long, at 637 pages, but it goes by too quickly, sometimes. If you have never read any Irving before, I actually wouldn't recommend this as the first one to read since the others will just not seem as good, and definitely a whole lot more weird by comparison! The Cider House Rules is a good one to start with, and I'd also read Hotel New Hampshire and Garp which made Owen seem utterly normal. If you do read and love Owen, I think you would also be keen on A Widow for One Year and A Son of the Circus. And maybe the new one, the Fourth Hand, as well.

I saw the play version of this at the National, and although it did it's best, and was eminently watchable, it is so very difficult to condense this book into a workable theatrical format, although I appreciate the impetus to do it- bringing these extraordinary characters to life outside your own head is so tempting. By the way, when you get to the bit with the dissolute Larry Lish, try picturing Philip Seymour Hoffman in Freddy Miles mode (Talented Mr. Ripley) in your head. He's so perfect. Oh, and a word of warning. DON'T WATCH SIMON BIRCH!!! Apparently based on this book, this emetic offering, which miscasts Jim Carrey as the grown up Johnny, andd strips all charm, wonder, the original ending and half of the supporting cast away, is to be avoided at all costs. What John Irving was thinking, I don't know...

I have been reticent to recommend this book to friends before as I felt rather possessive of it- no one wants to hear something bad about their favourite book, right? But at the same time I find it hard to believe that anyone could wholeheartedly dislike this if they had an open mind and a lot of imagination. I dream of writing something as good as this, and I hope you enjoy it. Next op will be something frothy and funny- I simply can't be serious for this long!

Thanks for getting this far!

Alex :)