Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball that kills his best friend s mother. Owen doesn t believe in accidents; he believes that he is God s instrument. What happens to Owenafter that 1953 foul is both 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 remarkable novel. . . . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation. ... 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
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.
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, one of literary fiction’s most unforgettable characters, believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary.
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
