I recently finished the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. An amazing book, A Prayer for Owen Meany deals with such themes as religion, destiny, death, and growing up among other things. It is a very well written book and kept me wanting more. I think I lost some interest as the end drew near but the ending was more powerful than expected.

I will not tell the last line of the book for those who have not read it, not that it would give anything away. Usually I can’t help but read the last line of the book before I get too far into it, but this time I did not. This line is so appropriate and unexpected. The narrator spends the whole book relfecting without much emotion about the subject, I think. Then as the book ends, in this one line, he screams. He falls to his knees and cries. It is an exhausting ending.

An interesting thing I found out researching some websites for this post. A band I dig on, Jimmy Eat World has a song Goodbye Sky harbor on their album, Clarity that is based on this novel. Its more of an instrumental song, but the lyrics. definitely pertain to Owen Meany. I thought this was already a wonderful novel, but now my old memories have been washed ashore to encompass this new place and it becomes a brief moment of freedom.

Some Resources:

• A Wikipedia entry about John Irving.
• A poorly designed site, but with good content about John Irving.
• A Wikipedia entry about A Prayer for Owen Meany.