This is John Irving's most comic novel, yet Owen Meany is Mr. Irving's most heartbreaking character. 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.... read more
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice and believes that he is an instrument of God. He is the best friend of the narrator, John Wheelwright.
“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time -- the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes -- when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever -- there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”
“The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.”
“He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.”
“I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.”
“As often as I feel certain that God exits, I feel as often at a loss to say what difference it makes – that He exists – or even: that to believe in God, which I do, raises more questions than it presents answers. Thus, when I am feeling my most faithful, I also feel full of a few hard questions that I would like to put to God – I mean, critical questions of the How-Can-He, How-Could-He, How-Dare-You variety.””Lewis Merrill
“O God--please give him back! I shall keep asking You.”John Wheelwright
“Your boredom is your problem <...> It's your lack of imagination that bores you.”Owen Meany
“If you're a victim, the world will use you.”Owen Meany
“I'm 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.”John
Chapter 1 - The Foul Ball
Chapter 2 - The Armadillo
Chapter 3 - The Angel
Chapter 4 - The Little Lord Jesus
Chapter 5 - The Ghost of the Future
Chapter 6 - The Voice
Chapter 7 - The Dream
Chapter 8 - The Finger
Chapter 9 - The Shot
Great for young adults on up, also younger teens with good reading skills. Some foul language and sexual discussions unsuitable for some people
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