A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving (1989)
“Owen Meany is the smallest boy in Gravesend, New Hampshire. He speaks entirely in capital letters. He believes God has chosen him for a purpose. When his foul ball kills his best friend's mother, a chain of events begins that will prove him right.”
Short Summary
John Wheelwright narrates the story of his best friend, Owen Meany, a stunted, squeaky-voiced boy who believes he is an instrument of God. After Owen hits a foul ball that kills John's mother in a Little League game, the two boys grow up together through the turbulent 1960s in small-town New Hampshire. Owen's unshakable conviction that he knows the date and manner of his own death drives the novel toward a climax in which faith, sacrifice, and the Vietnam War collide in ways that vindicate every strange thing Owen ever believed about himself.
Detailed Summary
The novel is narrated by John Wheelwright from Toronto, Canada, in the late 1980s, looking back on his childhood and adolescence in Gravesend, New Hampshire during the 1950s and 1960s. John is a bastard — his mother, Tabitha Wheelwright, never told him who his father was. His best friend since birth...