Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. 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. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose." When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn't cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras.

The book's mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies's Deptford trilogy, and the fatal baseball relates to the fatefully misdirected snowball in the first Deptford novel, Fifth Business. Tiny, symbolic Owen echoes the hero of Irving's teacher Günter Grass's The Tin Drum--the two characters share the same initials. A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on literature, history, and God. --Tim Appelo

Owen Meany, the only child of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he is God's instrument; he is.
This is John Irving's most comic novel, yet Owen Meany is Mr. Irving's most heartbreaking character.
"Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic...Dickensian in scope....Quite stunning and very ambitious."
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"John Irving is an abundantly and even joyfully talented storyteller."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOKR EVIEW

This is my very favorite book of my life! It is filled with memorable characters and circumstances. Laced with humor even through trials and the Viet Nam war. If you haven't yet read this book - do yourself a favor. It is incredible and you will remember it for the rest of your life!

What more is there to say about this book? It is an incredible read and I would rate this among my favorites of all time. Owen will be with me for a long time to come. Buy this book, sit back and enjoy the ride.

Not only is this book horrifically offensive to Christianity by comparing an irritating and presumptuously arrogant dwarf to Jesus, but it is also in need of major editing. I won't bore anyone with a description of the plot, since it's one of the most lackluster stories I've ever read. This book meanders in the sections in which the narrator describes his present-day life. Also, it gives endless boring descriptions of characters that nobody cares about. It's all "telling" and no "showing". The imagery is something that a first-grader could have come up with ("the lake was wonderful," "the grass was wonderful," "the pines were wonderful," etc.)
If this book had been written by a rookie writer, it never would have been published. It's only because John Irving's name was on it that it got published. Anyone who thinks it's the best book they've ever read (as many of these reviewers do) sorely needs to get a life. A complete bore, "Owen Meany" isn't worth the wood-sludge that it was printed on.

ABSOLUTE 0/5!!!!!

I had bought this book for friends of mine as a wedding gift and was not disappointed! With pain in my heart/hands I had to give the book away as intended - the book is one of my all-time favourites and the introduction by John Irving himself made it even better.

I LOVE this book. I am an avid reader and a writer, and I'm fairly particular about the fiction I read. This book was amazing. The characters are so clearly drawn that they seem like real people. The plot kept me enthralled till the end. The ending itself surprised me (and I'm hard to surprise). Irving is a great writer; his skill at putting together words made the story move along mostly effortlessly. (Though I agree with one of the other reviews - some of the flashbacks were hard to follow at times.) None of his characters are "perfect," which makes them all the more likeable. Parts of the story are totally hilarious, while other parts are sad -- a lot like life. This is the best book I've read in years - and I've read a LOT of books in the past several years! I recommend it to everyone I know who reads a lot.