These are necessary because we slowly realize that Owen is heading for a place that we don’t want him to go, a destiny that becomes so necessary for him and that as readers we dread. The family and friends provide wonderful twists and turns.

The subplots are important and bring the book to life as the boys grow into men. John accepts Owen as he is and lets us do the same, even though John prefers doubt as his faith métier. His importance to John and all their actions together are based in who he really is and not in John’s tolerance of Owen’s religious conviction. There are revelations in the story line that depend on the surety of his belief and his mission, but never a hint of sanctimonious piety. But as the novel progresses it becomes evident that there is little room for doubt in Owen’s life and that it is deep and personal.

His belief comes early and might be dismissed as the callow faith of a young person. It’s important not to be scared away from the action by Owen’s faith. This brings the friends into a true brotherly connection and gives John, the novel’s narrator, the inside track we need to trust him with so many revelations about Owen and his growing up. Owen’s family is so strangely dysfunctional that his parents appear as ciphers throughout the book and all of Owen’s family relationships come through John’s family. This event is mentioned in the first sentence of the book. John and Owen are life-long friends despite the fact that Owen is the “instrument” of John’s mother’s death by a fly-ball when the boys are eleven. At a very early age he befriends Johnny Wheelwright, scion of a modestly successful New England family, but a bastard by a fling his mother gently refuses to talk about. Despite these seeming setbacks, he’s the most confident and charismatic figure in any locale he inhabits.

Owen is one of Irving’s oddest characters (and that’s a tough competition.) Physically he’s barely five feet tall, light as a feather, ears protruding and a voice shrilly coming from a larynx that refused to “descend” so that his every word is portrayed AS IF SHOUTING. In that spirit the novel is satisfying to follow: twists, turns, multiple characters individually recognizable, and plot points believably resolved. While not his most critically acclaimed novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany won for John Irving a huge and appreciative audience a quarter century ago and remains one of the most memorable of his many works.

John irving's a prayer for