A Prayer for Owen Meany (Modern Library)

In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God’s instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary and terrifying. At moments a comic, self-deluded victim, but in the end the principal, tragic actor in a divine plan, Owen Meany is the most heartbreaking hero John Irving has yet created. A Prayer For Owen Meany was first published in 1989. “A remarkable novel. . . . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation in the somehow exhausted world of late twentieth-century fiction—it is an amazingly brave piece of work . . . so extraordinary, so original, and so enriching. . . . Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] richly textured and carefully wrought world.” - Stephen King, Washington Post“Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating, and darkly comic . . . Dickensian in scope . . . Quite stunning and very ambitious.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review "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 I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany." So begins John Irving's new novel. In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys - best friends - are playing ina Little League baseball game in Gravesend , New Hampshire; one of the boys hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother. The boy who hit the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen - after that 1953 fould ball - is extraordinary and terrifying. (front flap)

john Irving’s A Prayer For Owen Meany Is The Inspiring Modern Classic That Introduced Two Of The Author’s Most Unforgettable Characters, Boys Bonded Forever In Childhood: The Stunted Owen Meany, Whose Life Is Touched By God, And The Orphaned Johnny Wheelwright, Whose Life Is Touched By Owen. From The Accident That Links Them To The Mystery That Follows Them–and The Martyrdom That Parts Them–the Events Of Their Lives Form A Tapestry Of Fate And Faith In A Novel That Is Irving At His Irresistible Best.

los Angeles Times Book Review

roomy, Intelligent, Exhilarating And Darkly Comic ... Dickensian In Scope .... Quite Stunning And Very Ambitious.

In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God’s instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary and terrifying. A Prayer for Owen Meany was first published in 1989. This Modern Library edition includes a new Introduction by the author. Fiction,Psychological,Sports A modern American epic - compelling and darkly comic. playing baseball, Owen Meany hits a foul ball and kills his best friends mother. Owen does not believe in accidents, rather that he is God's instrument. What happens after that game is both extrodinary and terrifying Owen Meany hits a foul ball while playing baseball in the summer of 1953 that kills his best friend's mother, an accident that Owen is sure is the result of divine intervention A story of friendship through adversity, faith and destiny, and the search for God