A Prayer for Owen Meany

Front Cover
Bloomsbury, 2007 - Fiction - 656 pages
Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen doesn't believe in accidents; he believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul is both extraordinary and terrifying. At moments a comic, self-deluded victim, but in the end the principal, tragic actor in a divine plan, Owen Meany is the most heartbreaking hero John Irving has yet created.

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About the author (2007)

John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942, and he once admitted that he was a 'grim' child. Irving achieved international recognition with The World According to Garp, which he hoped would 'cause a few smiles among the tough-minded and break a few softer hearts'. The Cider House Rules is the story of Doctor Wilbur Larch - saint, obstetrician, founder of an orphanage, ether addict and abortionist - and of his favourite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. Irving has had a life-long passion for wrestling, and he plays a wrestling referee in the film version of The World According to Garp. He now writes full-time, has three children and lives in Vermont and Toronto.

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