martytdx's Full Review: John Irving and Diane Podnar - A Prayer for Owen M...
"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason that I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."
Owen Meany played a profound influence on the narrator of A Prayer for Owen Meany - Johnny Wheelwright - and this story will have one on most of the readers. Owen is no ordinary little boy. He is little - so little that he becomes the target of all of the other schoolkids, who can't resist picking him up. He has THE VOICE - one that comes out as a piercing and frightening screech, and captures the attention of everyone around him. And he is haunted - he knows things that he can't reveal and carries the guilt of killing his best friend's mother.
The story starts with a bit of history of the area, and of the pre-history of the story, but quickly catches up with the main characters and the lead list of supporting cast. We find the beginnings of what should keep these two close friends ultimately apart - physical differences, social differences, cultural and religious differences. And a tragic consequence of a baseball game.
GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT.
Big words for an eleven-year old who can almost sit in his friend's lap. But Owen is so self-assured that whether John believes him or not, he knows that there is something special about Owen. They all know that there is something different, but no one but Johnny knows how different - or special - Owen really is.
Through their years together, Owen grows closer to Johnny than a simple friend. He becomes a brother, a aide in the search for Johnny's unnamed father, an influence that will guide the way that Johnny's life goes in almost every aspect. From helping to search for the identity of Johnny's father to keeping him out of the Vietnam war, Owen has written the script for Johnny's life although Johnny never realizes it until the end of the story - and only then does he know that Owen knew the script for his own life as well, but never revealed it.
Each action in his short life was a test to help him fulfill the one part of his destiny that he couldn't see - the final act. Johnny faithfully helps Owen in these tasks, things that he can't possibly know the reasons for. But to Owen, even Johnny's mother's death had a purpose. Everything had a purpose to Owen. Even if he was the only one to seem to know why everything around him was happening.
He had sunk the shot in under four seconds!
"YOU SEE WHAT A LITTLE FAITH CAN DO?" said Owen Meany. The brain-damaged janitor was applauding. "SET THE CLOCK TO THREE SECONDS!" Owen told him.
"Jesus Christ!" I said.
"IF WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER FOUR SECONDS, WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER THREE," he said. "IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE MORE FAITH."
"It takes more practice," I told him irritably.
"FAITH TAKES PRACTICE," said Owen Meany
Irving uses Owen Meany to analyze faith, not only as in an individual religion sense, but in a whole spirituality sense. Despite everything that he endures, Owen Meany never loses his faith, his knowledge that he is an INSTRUMENT OF GOD, as he reminds Johnny on many occasions. It is this faith, through the threat of expulsion, through the lean and hard teen years, and into his enlistment into the army, that keeps Owen going, knowing that he has a mission that he has to fulfill, and not much time to do it. Along the way, he changes Johnny, filling him with confidence and self-reliance and even religion, infusing all of those characteristics that Owen has an abundance of and is loathe to leave behind.
Irving's narrative is uniquely captivating, as is the way that he chooses to depict characters, to breath life into them. Although Owen and Johnny are by far the main characters, they live only among the rest of the cast, who all have their own place in this tapestry in New Hampshire. Owen touches everyone in some small way, leading up to his grand fulfillment.
A Prayer for Owen Meany is my favorite book, and many other's that I have lent it to have found a fondness for the story above many others that they have read. Owen grabs you the way he grabs the other characters in the novel. There is something so strong, so compelling about him that you have to find out what is going to happen.
"NOW I KNOW WHY YOU HAD TO BE HERE," Owen said to me. "DO YOU SEE WHY?" he asked me.
"Yes," I said.
"REMEMBER ALL OF OUR PRACTICING?" he asked me.
"I remember," I said.
_____________________
NOTE ON SIMON BIRCH: This was supposed to be the first John Irving novel to actually get the author's blessing but near the end of the project, he removed his name and forced a title change. Although much of the book is still in the film, there are many changes as well that make the story stray far from Irving's intent. How they could be so close and still change the plot so much as to lose Irving's endorsement and the main feeling of the book is beyond me. Simon Birch by itself is a good movie, but it is not A Prayer for Owen Meany and it is nearly impossible to like one and not have hard feelings towards the other.
Literary Fiction - John Irving,Mass Market Paperback - REISSUE, English-language edition,Pages:617,Pub by Random House Publishing Group - A Prayer for...More at Barnes and Noble
Owen Meany, the only child of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he is God s instrument. He is. This is John Irving s most comic novel; yet Ow...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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