A Prayer for Owen Meany

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John Irving

Morrow, New York, 2009; originally published 1989, English

Fiction

ISBN: 9780688077082

While playing baseball in 1953, one boy hits a ball which kills another boy’s mother. This novel follows Owen Meany, the boy who hit the ball and who does not believe in misfortune but rather believes he is an instrument of God, from this moment through the rest of his astonishing life.

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Jonathan Adler

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Not the biggest John Irving fan, but I love this book. I’m Sam the Skeptic and I hate magical realism, but I was totally able to suspend my disbelief for this book’s fate-based conceit. For a similar freaky-but-utterly-convincing-supernatural sitch try Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. Fab.

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