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A review by mary00
House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home by Mark Richard
4.0
I am happy to have won a free copy of this memoir from Goodreads First Reads and to have read it.
This man can write! I was in awe the entire book over his ability to perfectly sum up in a sentence or two experiences that would take other writers pages to do justice. What is so beautiful about his writing is that the actual words that he uses are only half of the story that is evoked to the reader; what is left unsaid is just as powerful. This man has had more note-worthy experiences in his lifetime to date than ten "typical" individuals together would have. Throughout the book I would stop reading at certain times to tell my husband about what I had just read. This is something that I rarely do, and a testament to the power of the author's words and the variety of his life experience. He has truly led a renegade life and his writing style matches it (for example his uncommon choice to write the majority of his memoir using second person perspective, and his deft shrinking of major life experiences into mere sentences (he has fully embraced the concept of "less is more" in this book)).
The author's childhood experiences growing up as a "special child" resonated most deeply with me, as I have a special needs son myself. (As a side note, I often wondered throughout the book if the author might have a high-functioning form of autism, especially when he described some of his behaviors as a child.) He became someone I was rooting for to have a successful and happy life, and it appears that he has done that.
This book sparked an interest in me to read the author's critically acclaimed fiction. However, my local library does not carry any of his works (including this book). It seems a shame that an author this talented should not have books in every library in America.
This man can write! I was in awe the entire book over his ability to perfectly sum up in a sentence or two experiences that would take other writers pages to do justice. What is so beautiful about his writing is that the actual words that he uses are only half of the story that is evoked to the reader; what is left unsaid is just as powerful. This man has had more note-worthy experiences in his lifetime to date than ten "typical" individuals together would have. Throughout the book I would stop reading at certain times to tell my husband about what I had just read. This is something that I rarely do, and a testament to the power of the author's words and the variety of his life experience. He has truly led a renegade life and his writing style matches it (for example his uncommon choice to write the majority of his memoir using second person perspective, and his deft shrinking of major life experiences into mere sentences (he has fully embraced the concept of "less is more" in this book)).
The author's childhood experiences growing up as a "special child" resonated most deeply with me, as I have a special needs son myself. (As a side note, I often wondered throughout the book if the author might have a high-functioning form of autism, especially when he described some of his behaviors as a child.) He became someone I was rooting for to have a successful and happy life, and it appears that he has done that.
This book sparked an interest in me to read the author's critically acclaimed fiction. However, my local library does not carry any of his works (including this book). It seems a shame that an author this talented should not have books in every library in America.