A very grudging three stars, maybe 2.5. The ending was great, but the journey was not worth it, at least not for me. Very mixed feelings here, but I'll try to be fair. 
 This was supposed to be a buddy read with Ed, but it didn't work out that way. He's hoping to read all of Irving's books this year, but he's become busy lately (and I'm glad it's working out that way for him), so he didn't get to this around the time he thought he would. Since I read a lot slower than he, I started this a couple weeks before he thought he would. Note to Ed: I seriously doubt you'll have the same hang-ups I do about this, and I suspect you'll enjoy it a lot more than I did. 
 The good: John Irving writes well, and the story is very well crafted. Almost everything comes together in the end. I've put this on my "classics" shelf even though I didn't care for the book, but I still feel it deserves to be there. The way he puts all the parts together reminds me of Charles Dickens who did that quite well. This book also provides a snapshot in time for the Vietnam War and how some people felt about it. These views are opposite of my own, but it's still quite accurate. The characters are deep, rich, and realistic, even the comedic ones. There's just a lot to like about this book, but... 
 ...there's also a lot to pooh-pooh. Like I said, everything is wrapped up by the end, but this moves at a snail's pace. Around the 50% mark (300 pages), I was wondering if this was going anywhere. 300 pages is a long time to be diddling along. Some authors manage to put three full novels in at the 300 page mark, but Irving has barely gotten started. And how's this for irony: The narrator, John Wheelwright, is a teacher, and he bitches about how his students' "papers generally 'began' after four or five pages of wandering around in a soup of ideas for beginnings? If it took them four or five pages to find the right beginning, didn't they think they should consider revising their papers and beginning them on page four or five?" This isn't exactly Irving's problem as the book begins well, but the first 300 pages could probably lose 250 and still work fine. 
 And this leads to another problem. The bitching. Almost everyone in this book is constantly complaining, and it gets wearisome. Even when there's a positive message, it's bitched out. And then there are things that don't belong in the book at all. Peppered all throughout this is the narrator complaining about Ronald Regan, conservatives, the Iran Contra affair, Americans in general, and a few other issues. It's all very condescending. I'm guessing he was trying to draw a parallel between the 1960's and 1980's, but I'm not sure. I believe he felt he had a captive audience and used the book as a platform to spew a bit of vitriol on the right. Since I lean right myself, that made reading this a chore. Every few pages he'd start griping about Regan, or Americans, or whatever, and I'd roll my eyes and plow through. So while I thought this book had a lot of promise, I'll probably never read another John Irving book again. I have Until I Find You on my shelf (I think I got it at a book grab at work a few years ago). I've never read it, and it's going straight to a friend I give books I don't want to. Either that or the library for their book sale. It's good for me to get out of my comfort zone once in a while; it builds character, but I'm not going to neglect books I actually want to read just to continuously try something different in an effort to brainwash myself to the other side. 
 Oddly enough this was one of the books I wanted to read, though if I'd known it was filled with leftist propaganda I might never have tried it. This book was a gift from an old (and currently former) friend. He gave it to me for Christmas 2005, and I'm sorry it took 11 years to get to it. He inscribed that it was one if his "favorite books. It's a really neat story about faith and I thought it would be cool to share it with you." 
 He was right: there is a story about faith in here, and that brings me back to a good part of the book or at least something I can relate to. My faith is similar to Owen's even if we don't share opinions on other things. Owen (and almost everyone else in this book) was a negative Nellie, but he was steadfast in his conviction that God was leading him where he needed to go. I can relate to that, and the theme of faith is this book's major redeeming quality for me. It's the only reason this gets 2.5 stars instead of one. 
 And though my friend and I don't talk anymore, and I didn't care for this book, and I'll never reread it, I'm going to keep it anyway. It reminds me of a good person and some good times even if we've both changed and moved in different directions in the intervening years. 
 Oh, another thing. Aside from using this as a stump to espouse his politics, Irving also gives his opinion on a lot of literary works. Most of this was lost on me since I'm not as educated as he is, but I suspect an English major would love those parts. There were plenty of them. There was also a lot of symbolism, and themes, and other literary stuff I usually don't follow very well. I don't always know what's going on at that level, but I sometimes see that it's there. Like I said: if you're an English Lit person, you'll dig it. 
 I guess I would suggest this for left leaning peeps, and literary types. And while there was a good message of faith, I didn't think it was a great message of faith. A few things mar it along the way. (E.g.: (view spoiler)["...THEY'RE DEFINITELY VIETNAMESE CHILDREN, AND I SAVE THEM. I WOULDN'T GO TO ALL THIS TROUBLE IF I WAS SUPPOSED TO SAVE SOLDIERS!" I'm guessing if he had been called by God to save soldiers, he'd have told the almighty he could take a flying leap since that didn't suit him, (hide spoiler)] so he's kind of selective in his obedience. It falls flat next to the Abraham/Isaac example in the Bible which is admittedly a tough act to follow. Also, after his moment of triumph, Owen says "PLEASE SEE TO IT THAT I GET SOME KIND OF MEDAL FOR THIS;" this definitely doesn't cover the humility part of Christianity well, but a lot of people miss that boat, Christians included. Humility doesn't come naturally to humanity; most people have to work at it.) 
 There are other stories that do faith better. However, I still think Irving did a good job portraying it since he's "not a believer." He also "backs away" from calling himself an atheist, but according to what I've seen I'd consider him closer to atheist than anything else. Perhaps he was ridiculing faith, and the joke is on me, but I still thought that theme was well done.