This is one of the best books I've ever read - top five for certain. I've read it more than once, that's how good it is.

It is the story of two boys (Owen Meany and John, the narrator) growing up in Gravesend, NH.

This is how it opens:

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."

After Owen causes John's mother's death, John is virtually an orphan because he does not know who his father is. His mother's husband (Dan Needham) becomes a father to John in such a way that he (John) realizes, looking back, that he had the most wonderful father he could have hoped for.

It is a journey to realize that fact and one that the reader is happy to take.

This book has a lot of political commentary, which I don't agree with at times, but I don't have to in order to realize this is one of the most moving pieces of fiction that I've ever read.

the character of Dan Needham. He reminds me of James Hobart in The Goldfinch.

A movie was made based on this book. It is called Simon Burch and is also one of my favorite movies. They changed Owen Meany to be Simon Burch, but the story is still basically (without the politics or the Vietnam stuff) the same. It is about friendship and about being a wonderful parent out of the goodness in one's heart.

Brilliant!

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Created Sep 06, 2014 at 12:28pm • Submit your own review...