Just finished A Prayer for Owen Meany

[RetroLounge]

By John Irving.

:wow:

Pretty amazing book.

Anyone else like this one? Not like it?

RL

[XemaSab]

1. I liked it!

I can't talk much about it 'cause I read it 5 years ago, but I remember being impressed.

[searchingforlight]

2. I believe that and "Cider House Rules" are his two greatest books.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

7. Cider House Rules is excellent.

I believe it's one of the best novels I've ever read.

Garp is just too bizarre.

Haven't read Owen Meany.

[RetroLounge]

9. "Cider House Rules" is on my shelf

haven't gotten to it yet...

:hi:

RL

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. Love it - one of my favorites - up there with Garp and Cider House Rules.

I also loved an early one, Water Method Man....one of my favorite writers.

[Gato Moteado]

4. one of my favorite books!

nt

[rainy]

5. Loved it. Very dear story.

[gratefultobelib]

6. Absolutely, totally and completely loved it!! Amazing, you are so right.

[ingac70]

8. I read it a few years back.. loved it. n/t

[Th1onein]

10. Irving's BEST book, in my opinion.

Wonderful book, wonderful writing, great plot. Shitty movie, though.

[RetroLounge]

11. It was a movie? Really?

:shrug:

RL

[gratefultobelib]

12. It wasn't a horrible movie. It just could not possibly measure up to the book. As I

remember it, the Owen Meany character died in the movie saving a bus load of kids from drowning. He was still a young boy (in the movie) when he died. Ashley Judd played the mom whom Owen idolizes. I'm sorry I can't remember the title.

[RetroLounge]

13. Simon Birch

I found it on IMDB.com

:hi:

RL

[japple]

14. I, too, think it's John Irving's best work. It is a wonderful,

absorbing, very sweet story. The characters are so well developed.

[Wheezy]

15. I loved this book!

I may have to read it again, now that you mentioned it.

[LWolf]

16. It's a great book. nt

[saltpoint]

17. Irving's best, IMO, and that's saying something.

[Paladin]

18. Great Book. I Think I LIke "Garp" Just A Little Better.... (n/t)

[hippywife]

19. One of my favorites of all time.

I may just have to read it again. At one point, it made me laugh out loud. :hi:

[Onceuponalife]

20. I agree with searchingforlight

Cider House and Owen Meany are Irving's best. But his funniest is The Hotel New Hampshire. I loved everything about Owen Meany. John Irving is my favorite author and Owen Meany is one of his best characters, right up there with T. S. Garp and Frannie Berry.

ITA that the movie Simon Birch was insipid and an insult to Irving's novel. It's a completely different story.

[RobertDevereaux]

21. Garp and Cider House Rules...

...are my favorites.

But Owen Meany is a close third!

[RufusTFirefly]

22. Loved it. If you liked "Owen Meany," try the books of Robertson Davies

Davies is a Canadian author (now deceased). When I was reading Owen Meany, I was struck by the elements it shared with Davies' book Fifth Business, the first novel in what later became known as The Deptford Trilogy.

The key element I felt the two books handled in a similar fashion was the chain reaction effect an accident or disaster during childhood can have on everyone who witnessed it for the rest of their lives.

Here's the book jacket blurb for Fifth Business

Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous.

Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.

While writing this post, I did a little searching and it would seem that I'm not the only one who noted a curious similarity between Fifth Business and A Prayer for Owen Meany. In fact, the writer wonders aloud whether Irving wasn't guilty of plagiarism. (Warning: The linked blog contains major spoilers for those who haven't read the books.)

[DemoTex]

23. Not exactly apples vs. apples, but "Owen Meany" reminds me somewhat of ..

Forrest Gump. Maybe it is the breadth of outrageous experiences overlaid by Viet Nam duty.

Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany" is the better book, but Winston Groom's "Forrest Gump" is well worth the read, too. And, of course, "Forrest Gump" (the movie with Tom Hanks) is a two-thumbs-upper.