About this title: Owen Meany, the dwarf son of a quarry worker in New Hampshire, accidentally kills his best friend's mother with a baseball when he hits it into the stands at a Little League game. Meany subsequently becomes a mystic who believes he is an instrument of God.
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Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780345361790ISBN:0345361792
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Light edge and corner wear. No marks. Tight binding. Tanning pages. Corner crease on front cover. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 640 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: MASS MARKET PAPERBACK
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN-13:9780345361790ISBN:0345361792
Description: Fair. 0345361792 Acceptable paperback book, some creases to spine and corners, may have spine slant or page curling, text is clear for reading. Shop & Save With US. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780345361790ISBN:0345361792
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Light edge wear to soft cover. Light hint of page tanning form age. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 640 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1990-04-14
ISBN-13:9780345361790ISBN:0345361792
Description: Fair. MMPB. NOTE! ! ! BOOK LOOKS LIKE IT FELL IN A MUD PUDDLE! SOIL TO COVERS AND EDGES. ABOVE AVERAGE READING WEAR. READING COPY ONLY. SOLID. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780345361790ISBN:0345361792
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Solid lightly tanning book with clean pgs, book shows shelf, edge & corner wear, upper front corners bumed. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 640 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780345361790ISBN:0345361792
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Solid lightly tanning book with clean pgs, book shows shelf, edge & corner wear, upper front corners bumed. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 640 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"The characters and stories in this book linger. It's messy with contradiction. Religion, faith and doubt, politics, war, life and death, truth, sex, family, education, America, the nature of love and friendship, growing up (or not)--all bases are covered, denied, embraced, refused, embellished and stripped bare.
Moving between the narrator John Wheelwright's present, during the Reagan administration, and his youth in the 50's and 60's in a small New Hampshire town, the central character, Owen Meany, looms as large as the capital letters of his Voice throughout the book. John says at one point that he always remembers Owen as a child, and as a reader, I felt that as well. Even as a teenager and young adult, driving, smoking, working, drinking, living with John's cousin Hester, even after he became an Army officer, even then, he still seemed like a lost, earnest, precocious little boy. His struggles with God and his faith, his fatalistic shaping of not only his own life, but that of the people who intersect it, are acts of both intellectual maturity and a childish belief in magic.
Irving's observations, often puncutated not only by John's cynical words , but by Owen's counterpoint VOICE, about Americans and American politics and religion, have been chillingly repeated with the Bush administration and our involvement in Iraq.
On the Tonkin Gulf Resolution: "DOES THAT MEAN THE PRESIDENT CAN DECLARE A WAR WITHOUT DECLARING IT?"
On the first American troops arriving in Vietnam: "THERE'S NO END TO THIS...THERE'S NO GOOD WAY TO END IT."
From John's diary: May 30, 1987--I should know better than to read even as much as a headline in The New York Times... Reagan Declares Firmness on Gulf; Plans Are Unclear Isn't that a classic? I don't mean the semicolon; I mean, isn't that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don't be clear, but be firm!
Mavericks, anyone?
It's not often I find myself laughing out loud while reading on the subway, but the children's Christmas pageant, especially, is not to be missed.
The fantastical way the elements come together to realize Owen's childhood premonitions and Dream leave the reader with the same unanswered questions that John has. What to make of it? A Miracle? Is God the answer? John says yes, yet does not really act on that belief.
Owen once told John that you have to act as though what you do matters, even though you can never be sure--that's what faith is. "YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.""
"I liked this book. I didn't find it powerful, or moving - it wasn't one of those books that seemed to have singled me out at a crowded party, taken me to a quiet bedroom and stolen my literary virginity - but I enjoyed it. It never dragged, was never boring, always entertaining, often good for a laugh... but I don't think I quite got it.
I was waiting for something more spectacular to happen at the end. That there was all this build up just for him to do something that I won't spoil here but that didn't seem quite spectacular enough seemed a bit odd to me. Similarly the reason his voice didn't change. Perhaps I'm just a cold-hearted bitch, but the whole ending didn't really make sense to me. There was something about the entire book that didn't quite gel."
"This is probably my all-time favorite. I've teach it in class from time to time, which is probably a mistake, as there are always students who feel the need to criticize it, something no one should do in my prescense! This book focuses on one of my favorite themes in literature: the power of that which we cannot see. In this case, the invisible power is faith - namely, Owen's faith in God. I'm not really a religious person at all, but this book was life-changing for me."
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