A Prayer for Owen Meany

by John Irving


This is a beautiful story about John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany. The book is divided in two parts. The first part is about the boys’ growing up in Gravesend, New Hampshire. The second part is about the present that in the book was 1980.

Owen is a small, underdeveloped boy with “wrecked voice” and weirdly luminous skin. He is very fond of John’s mother who adores Owen. She even convinces his parents to let him attend the elite Gravesend’s Academy. John, who lives with his mom and grandmother, doesn’t know who his father is, but hopes that one day his mom will tell him. All his hopes are shattered one day when Owen kills her accidently with a baseball. However John and Owen still remain close friends even after this tragic event. Owen believes that everything in life happens for a reason and that his faith in God will help John to find his father.

After John’s mom died, Owen wins the role of baby Jesus and the Christmas ghost in a Christmas play at the amateur theater. Owen shocks everyone in the middle of one of the performances, when he sees his parents in the audience; he demands that they leave… He was very good as a scary Christmas ghost in A Christmas Carol, but on the final night of the performance he sees a vision; a vision of his own gravestone with the date of his death. He is convinced that the vision will become true. As Time passes he sees other visions which give more and more details of his own death. Owen starts to believe that he is an instrument of God.

When the boys were old enough they begin attending Gravesend’s Academy. Owen was an odd boy who was physically fragile, but reading the book you can see how strong he was mentally. You can easily imagine that Owen would be the boy that everybody makes fun of, but instead you find he was somewhat of an authority for all the other boys at the school. He had a column, called “The Voice”, in the school’s paper, but shortly before graduating he was expelled for helping students making fake IDs out of their draft cards.

This was a weird story, funny and sad; extremely vividly written. John Irving is a master of words. This novel is his most autobiographical. He, like John in the book, lived in New Hampshire, didn’t know his real father and even his stepfather was a professor at the University. This was my first book from Irving’s works and it’s still my favorite. The author is such a talented story teller that in one page he makes you laugh and in the next page he can make you cry. This was an amazing book, I know it’s a favorite of many people; you can’t go wrong by choosing this novel. This is a thick book (over 600 pages), but it’s fast, easy and very enjoyable an unforgettable read. This is one of those books that you don’t want to end.

The Cider House Rules

by John Irving


Dr. Wilbur Larch is the founder and director of an orphanage in the town of St. Cloud. Orphanage is not only a place where all abandoned kids live; it’s a place in Maine, where women from all over the state are coming to deliver babies or to get an abortion, that was illegal at the time. Dr. Larch has dedicated all of his life to make this choice possible – to deliver the baby or to perform an abortion. Homer Wells is Dr. Larch’s favorite orphan, who was never adopted. Well actually he was adopted several times, but they always brought him back to an orphanage. So at one point he was too old to be adopted; nobody would want to adopt a 10 years old boy. They prefer babies, so Homer grows up spending most of his time at the hospital with Dr. Larch helping him. So after a while Dr. Larch discovers Homer’s talent in medicine and dreams that the boy would stay on at the orphanage after he retired. One day a young beautiful couple in a nice car stops by an orphanage. All the children hope they are here to adopt one of them and they are very disappointed when they find out that the young woman is only here to have an abortion. They are even more disappointed when the couple becomes close friends with Homer and decide to take him home with them. They didn’t adopt him because he was the same age as them. They just brought him to work for the summer at the apple farm. This was the first time for Homer to have some real friends, traveling so far from home even seeing the ocean… On that day when he leaves it’s obvious to Dr. Wilbur Larch that Homer will not be coming back…

This is a thick book; a little over a 1000 pages, but don’t worry about the amount of pages, it is well worth the time. When I was reading it, I felt like I really knew the characters. John Irving is a great author who makes his characters alive and the book unforgettable.