A Prayer for Owen Meany

I must have read A Prayer for Owen Meany close to 20 years ago; in the interim, the details had faded, and I remembered mainly that parts of it made me laugh harder than any book I'd read before or since. 

My memory was correct: I did laugh until my side hurt, and more than once. I also cried. But this book is so much more than that. It is, first of all, a joy to read from the standpoint of how, exactly, the story unfolds, the delicious care John Irving takes in deciding how much to reveal and when to reveal it. It is also a marvel for how expertly Irving fits an entirely fictional narrative into the cloth of historical events and (at the time it was written) current events. That the narrator, Johnny Wheelwright, is an English teacher and therefore many classics of literature also make an appearance is the icing on top.

Irving is the master of the improbable, and Owen Meany is infused with it from the opening pages (Johnny's mother being killed by an impossibly hit foul ball at a Little League game) to the closing lines (the inclusion of which, here, would spoil the story). Lest you think that only the events of the story are improbable: I assure you, the characters, too, beyond a mere mortal's imagination. 

It is, perhaps, this improbability - the impossibility - that renders the touches of wisdom so sharp. Just as the reader falls into the trap: that these people and this story is so ridiculous as to qualify as mind candy, that's the moment Irving springs one of his lines. "It's a no-win argument," he writes in the midst of describing Johnny's over-the-top cousin, "that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth." Who among us doesn't wish to know more of said mysteries?

Owen Meany, the reader learns early, does not believe in coincidences. The notion of a coincidence is described by him as a "stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design." Given the structure of Owen Meany, I think it's fair to ask whether it is John Irving who does not believe in coincidences....and whether he might be at least a little bit correct.

Five stars.