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A review by pattydsf
House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home by Mark Richard
5.0
“Say you have a ‘special child,’ which in the South means one between Downs and dyslexic. Birth him with his father away on army maneuvers along East Texas bayous. Give him his only visitor in the military hospital his father's father, a sometime railroad man, sometime hired gun for Huey Long with a Louisiana Special Police badge. Take the infant to Manhattan, Kansas in winter where the only visitor is a Chinese peeping tom, little yellow face in the windows during the cold nights. Further, frighten the mother, age 20, with the child's convulsions. There's something different about this child, the doctors say.”
I walked into my local library recently and a friend handed me this audiobook. She said that I really needed to read it. Stick with it, she said. It isn’t easy. I had no idea what I was in for. Mark Richard is not an author I had ever read before.
I am afraid that if I had picked up the actual book, I would have abandoned it long before I got to the end of the first chapter. Go back to the top of my review and reread those sentences above. That is how the book begins. I really didn’t get it at first. Second person narratives are so hard to read. The last one I read, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, was so unlike anything else I have read that I kept at it. In the case of House of Prayer #2, it was the narrator who drew me in.
As I learned in his memoir, Richard has a radio announcer’s voice and I could not resist his reading. I took my friend’s advice and stuck with it. Once I got used to the point of view, I was hooked and listened every chance I got.
This is a memoir that is fascinating and scary at the same time. Richard writes so well, that I felt I was there. That was both good and bad. There were moments when I could hardly listen to Richard tell his story. How did he live through all of this, I kept thinking. There is much in Richard’s tale that strained my belief system. There are many times that his life seemed at an end. His connections to God and faith are a bit bizarre, but I could not discount them. He believes and that is what is important.
If you are someone who reads memoirs regularly, don’t miss this one. If you like stories, fiction or non-fiction, that draw you in, shake you around and change you, you should look for this autobiography. This is a book that is promoted by one reader to another saying, “You must read this.” If you are a reader who relies on serendipity to find books for you, I am saying, “You must read this.” Give it a few pages so that you get Richard in your head, but you will not be sorry.
I walked into my local library recently and a friend handed me this audiobook. She said that I really needed to read it. Stick with it, she said. It isn’t easy. I had no idea what I was in for. Mark Richard is not an author I had ever read before.
I am afraid that if I had picked up the actual book, I would have abandoned it long before I got to the end of the first chapter. Go back to the top of my review and reread those sentences above. That is how the book begins. I really didn’t get it at first. Second person narratives are so hard to read. The last one I read, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, was so unlike anything else I have read that I kept at it. In the case of House of Prayer #2, it was the narrator who drew me in.
As I learned in his memoir, Richard has a radio announcer’s voice and I could not resist his reading. I took my friend’s advice and stuck with it. Once I got used to the point of view, I was hooked and listened every chance I got.
This is a memoir that is fascinating and scary at the same time. Richard writes so well, that I felt I was there. That was both good and bad. There were moments when I could hardly listen to Richard tell his story. How did he live through all of this, I kept thinking. There is much in Richard’s tale that strained my belief system. There are many times that his life seemed at an end. His connections to God and faith are a bit bizarre, but I could not discount them. He believes and that is what is important.
If you are someone who reads memoirs regularly, don’t miss this one. If you like stories, fiction or non-fiction, that draw you in, shake you around and change you, you should look for this autobiography. This is a book that is promoted by one reader to another saying, “You must read this.” If you are a reader who relies on serendipity to find books for you, I am saying, “You must read this.” Give it a few pages so that you get Richard in your head, but you will not be sorry.