This book introduced me to John Irving, and it set me on a path to read a bunch of his other books. I thoroughly enjoyed the ideas presented in this book, and have thought about them many times since first reading it about ten years ago.

A number of people have criticized Prayer for its inaccurate portrayal of Christianity and faith. I disagree. When I read the book, I was amazed at how spot-on Irving was in describing many of the thoughts and feelings I had experienced in my own Christian upbringing.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the book for me is the sense of wonder that the narrator, John Wheelwright, feels toward Owen Meany's seemingly charmed--in multiple senses of the word--life. Watching someone who seems to have a purpose, a destiny, as his life unfolds while not sensing a similar purpose in one's own life provides a horde of conflicting thoughts and emotions. On the one hand, John as a child is awed and fascinated, and at times almost convinced, by Owen's seemingly unshakable belief that he is an instrument of God. At the same time, however, John feels insecure and at the mercy of uncontrollable events in his own life--which despite being intertwined with the events of Owen's life, do not seem to him to be the destined history of a benevolent.

In the end, John comes to believe in God based on the events of Owen's life. But even that belief becomes something outside his own life, a faith that is less of a heart-felt truth and more a conclusion that there simply is no better way to explain the arcane and impossible-to-understand world outside.