A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel

“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 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

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest personI ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother'sdeath, 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 theother boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe inaccidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. Whathappens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary.

“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

“Exhilarating and darkly comic. ... Dickensian in scope. ... Stunning.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review

“The magic of A Prayer for Owen Meany is that it forces us into a confrontation with our own carapaces of skepticism . . . It is a brave and subtly disturbing affirmation of faith, and it is all the more remarkable for its engagement with the deepest questions, the most painful mysteries of our lives.” - Los Angeles Times

“Brilliantly cinematic . . . Irving shows considerable skill as scene after scene mounts to its moving climax. - ALFRED KAZIN, New York Times

"[A] great novel." - Dallas Morning News

"A work of genius." - Independent (London)

"A heartbreaking masterpiece of a novel." - Sunday Express (London)

"Among the very best American novels of our time." - Charlotte Observer