Davies Owen

Advantages: different to your average play
Disadvantages: comes across as being a bit strange

...as a very nosey and undesirable character. Mr and Mrs Cherry Owen are the characters that could perhaps represent Thomas’s personal ideal. Mr Cherry Owen gets so drunk that he doesn’t know what he is doing, and instead of being embarrassed and intolerant of his behaviour, Mrs Cherry Owen just laughs with him as though it is entertaining. One morning, the Cherry Owens were discussing, with amusement what Mr Cherry Owen asks ‘and then?’ Mrs Cherry Owen replied. ‘And then I got you into bed and you snored all night like a brewery’. Then they laughed delightedly together. The audience would find it hard to believe the behaviour of this odd couple, as Mr Cherry Owens behaviour would be considered completely unacceptable and embarrassing. Dai Bread is a character that lives entirely guilt free despite his extremely irregular lifestyle. He has two... Read review

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Advantages: A clever and enthralling tale of destiny and fate .
Disadvantages: A little perverse and a little long . But these are minor points .

...A Prayer for Owen Meany. **************************** A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of those books that I had been told was a 'must read' by countless friends and so it was with great pleasure that I finally got my hands on a copy just before Christmas. The main character is little Owen Meany himself, although the book is told from the perspective of Owen's best friend Johnny Wheelwright. Johnny tells Owen's story from 1987 and he details their childhood together throughout the 1950s and 1960s and their time in college together up until Owen's early and tragic death.... Owen is not your average youngster. To start off with he is a drawf and on top of this Owen has a very strange voice. THE WHOLE OF OWEN'S PROSE IS WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS THROUGHOUT THE BOOK TO AMPLIFY THIS. During their childhood Owen accidentally kills Johnny... Read review

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Advantages: No bears.
Disadvantages: Too much wrestling and unexplained jargon.

...John Irving is my favourite writer, characters like Garp and Owen Meany are unforgettable heroes, but in this, his autobiography, I'm afraid the main character is a bit of a bore... Hating ball sports, the young Irving took up wrestling, which became the love of his life. An obsession in fact. He says that: "when you love something, you have the capacity to bore everyone about why." Yes, and bore everyone silly too I'm afraid. "It's always the wrestling I remember; it marks the years", he tell us. And the vast majority of this tiny book is given over to reminiscences about wrestling. He even has a wrestling room in his house... "I want you to understand", he explains, "that the distance between my writing and my wrestling is never great." Get the picture? He describes his career as a student wrestler, then as a wrestling referee... Read review

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