A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (1997, Paperback)

John Irvings' novel "A Prayer for Owen Meany" is a meditation on literature, history, and God. The book develops a convincing appraisal of Vietnam through a subtext of religious philosophizing. Irving's uses his protagonist Owen Meany as a latter-day prophet, or Christ-like figure, who dies a martyr after having inspired true Christian belief in his friend, and the story's narrator, Johnny Wheelwright. The book's countless subplots expand Irving's moral argument.

Owen Meany is a diminutive boy and social outcast with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mother with a baseball. The event convinces him that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. Several of the scenes within the book provide seasoning for the narrative: the doltish headmaster driving a Volkswagen down the school's marble staircase and the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. When Owen plays baby Jesus, and when he glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting "A Christmas Carol," the humor amplifies the fact that he was born to be martyred.

Though Owen Meany is a compelling character, his power over the rest of Irving's cast is not entirely convincing. Still, readers will be drawn in by the story of the boys' friendship and by the desire to see some resolution to Johnny's numerous mysteries.

"A Prayer for Owen Meany," which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is perhaps the most mystic Christian novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. Irving fans will recognize much within the plot: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator, and the rough, sometimes slapstick comedy. Some readers will little doubt find the book preachy, but as a parable for our times, it serves a good purpose.