How long does it take to read A Prayer for Owen Meany?
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving takes about 9 hours 58 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 9 hours 58 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1989. 544 pages, about 149,600 words.
20 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 16 hours 37 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 9 hours 58 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 14 minutes |
The page count is the median across 41 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"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." So begins John Irving's new novel. In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys - best friends - are playing ina Little League baseball game in Gravesend , New Hampshire; one of the boys hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother. The boy who hit the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen - after that 1953 fould ball - is extraordinary and terrifying. (front flap)
Subjects: Friendship in fiction, Friendship, Fiction, Belief and doubt, Mothers, Death
