A Prayer for Owen Meany.
John Irving.
This book was picked up by me because it was very highly recommended by a leading author of historical romances, although to date I know not why! The synopsis of the book didn't do anything for me, but now that I was in possession of the book, I wanted to check it out.
I was engulfed from the very first sentence"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice"
The prose was so evocative that the book just carried me along. Each individual, incident, emotion and object is described in such beautiful detail that you are transported to that realm.
Nothing is as it seems and each thread gets neatly tied up, though you do not realise this foreshadowing whilst actually reading it.
A standout feature for me, was the unemotional way in which the author announces the most momentous of occurences.
There is no suddenness to the events, they are allowed to creep up on you gradually making you a bystander as the characters hurtle towards an inevitable future that only you and the author are privy too.
The book tells the story of two boys John Wheelwright and Owen Meany. It is a First Person Narrative and explores the relationship between two boys form their childhood to their adulthood in a small town in the US of A. It explores the dynamics of the people staying in that town without ever straying far from the two protagonists.
The author has very astutely explored spirituality vs. the lack thereof. The emotions are expressed at their rawest and also how the smallest of childhood incidences reverberate throughout one's life.
I was entranced by the clever weaving in of various cultural references and confess to googling the details on more than one occassion.
This was a tome of a book and stayed with me long after I was done with reading it and I have time and time again revisited it.
A crazy thing that I did whilst reading this one was to have downloaded the audible version too, so as to be able to hear it whilst driving too and the narrator - Joe Barrett has done a superlative job of bringing to life the unique voice of Owen Meany.
I highly recommend both the print and the audio versions of this one.
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