A Prayer for Owen Meany
First edition
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| Author | John Irving |
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| Cover artist | Honi Werner |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Bildungsroman |
| Publisher | William Morrow |
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Publication date
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March 1989 |
| Pages | 617 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 18557147 |
| Preceded by | The Cider House Rules |
| Followed by | A Son of the Circus |
A Prayer for Owen Meany is the seventh novel by American writer John Irving. Published in 1989, it tells the story of John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany growing up together in a small New Hampshire town during the 1950s and 1960s. According to John's narration, Owen is a remarkable boy in many ways; he believes himself to be God's instrument and sets out to fulfill the fate he has prophesied for himself.
The novel is also a homage to Günter Grass's most famous novel, The Tin Drum. Grass was a great influence for John Irving, as well as a close friend. The main characters of both novels, Owen Meany and Oskar Matzerath, share the same initials as well as some other characteristics, and their stories show some parallels. Irving has confirmed the similarities.A Prayer for Owen Meany, however, follows an independent and separate plot.
The story is narrated by John Wheelwright, a former citizen of New Hampshire who has become a voluntary expatriate from the United States, having settled in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and taken on Canadian citizenship.
The story is narrated in two interwoven time frames. The first time frame is the perspective of John in the present day (1987). The second time frame is John's memories of the past: growing up in New Hampshire in the 1950s and 1960s alongside his best friend, Owen Meany.
The events of 1987 are related in the style of diary entries. The present-day John Wheelwright works as an English teacher at the Bishop Strachan private girls' school in Toronto. He is an Anglican, and although he feels a strong sense of religious faith, he also experiences doubts about Christianity. A virgin and a bachelor, John is fixated on his past life and the political conditions in the United States, in particular, the Reagan administration. John's present-day narrative punctuates his retelling of past events, providing commentary and more recent anecdotes.
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