A Prayer for Owen Meany (Hardcover)

by John Irving | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: Global Overview for this book
Registered by winglmn60wing of Spotswood, Victoria Australia on 1/27/2007
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4 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by winglmn60wing from Spotswood, Victoria Australia on Saturday, January 27, 2007
I have another copy of this one on Mount To-Be-Read, so this one is ready for the wild!

from Amazon.com...
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose." When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn't cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras.
The book's mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies's Deptford trilogy, and the fatal baseball relates to the fatefully misdirected snowball in the first Deptford novel, Fifth Business. Tiny, symbolic Owen echoes the hero of Irving's teacher Günter Grass's The Tin Drum--the two characters share the same initials. A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on literature, history, and God

Journal Entry 2 by winglmn60wing at Kaleidoscope Cafe OBCZ in Brunswick, Victoria Australia on Saturday, February 3, 2007

Released 17 yrs ago (2/3/2007 UTC) at Kaleidoscope Cafe OBCZ in Brunswick, Victoria Australia

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

Releasing at meetup - if not taken, then this one will be at the OBCZ at Kaleidoscope!

Journal Entry 3 by claudinec from North Melbourne, Victoria Australia on Saturday, February 3, 2007
Picked up at today's meetup.

Journal Entry 4 by claudinec from North Melbourne, Victoria Australia on Friday, March 23, 2007
This really was a weird story. The characters were engaging and there were interesting ideas, but I thought the ending wrapped everything up too neatly. (But that's a strange criticism for me to make, as it was all crazy and unbelievable to begin with.)

Journal Entry 5 by rem_QQD-730725 on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
One of the 'left-overs' of tonights meet-up at the 'Royal Melbourne Hotel', 629 Bourke St., Melbourne. I was going to release it into the wild during the next couple of weeks. However, since I always wanted to read something from John Irving, I might give it a try, even if I can't read it in bed... ;-) --- it's simply too heavy!

26/07/2007: I'm really glad I gave it a try, because I definitely enjoyed this read. (Already signed-up for some bookrings of Irving's other books.) ;-)
So, we'll see where Owen and Johnny are going next...

Read as part of the 1 Year = 1 Country Challenge for the USA.

Released 16 yrs ago (8/8/2007 UTC) at Victoria University, Footscray Park Campus in Footscray, Victoria Australia

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

Left it in the Lady''s on the top floor for someone to find...

Journal Entry 7 by wingAnonymousFinderwing on Wednesday, December 19, 2007
You filthy bitch - leaving it in the loo! I've thrown it in the bin!

CAUGHT IN FOOTSCRAY VIC AUSTRALIA

Journal Entry 8 by rem_QQD-730725 on Friday, December 21, 2007
I left it next to the hand dryer and definitely not in the loo... someone must have picked it up in between August and now n put it back there... :-(

10/01/2008: It's wonderful to read that this book actually did not end up in the bin, as the first AnonymousFinder said... (o:

Journal Entry 9 by wingAnonymousFinderwing on Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Found in the cafe at Vic Uni Footscray

CAUGHT IN FOOTSCRAY (MELBOURNE) VICTORIA AUSTRALIA

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