Priestdaddy

This book is quietly hilarious. I loved being “inside” Patricia Lockwood’s mind. As a fellow lapsed Catholic, I resonated with her upbringing and living in the strange shadow of religion. Lockwood weaves a contradictory coming-of-age story with profound wit and lyricism.

She also explores the complexities of what she calls “The Portal”—the internet of things that boggle the mind even as they bring solace. I loved how Lockwood used “the portal” to understand her conservative upbringing and eventually find her own irreverent path in the world.

The book led me to follow her online presence too, and helped me learn… show more.

The author’s chronicle of growing up the child of a married Catholic priest—who lives in his boxer shorts, plays ear-crushing electric guitar, worships action films, and once got arrested at an abortion clinic sit-in—somehow manages to be beautiful, cringe-inducing, jaw-dropping and absolutely hilarious at once. When circumstances force the author and her husband to move back in with her Priest-dad in her parents’ rectory, their worlds collide in an explosion of soulful, moving family madness. Woven through the entire saga are strains of love, faith, and the enduring, hysterical bonds of family.

Patricia Lockwood’s memoir about growing up as the daughter of a married Catholic priest contains some of the best comic lines I’ve ever read. I still quote it regularly. When Lockwood and her husband move back in with her parents following a medical situation, two improbable things ensue at once: piercing reflections on a religious upbringing in a deeply patriarchal household, and family portraiture rendered in slapstick-funny, laugh-out-loud scenes. Lockwood approaches the world of her parents, and of her childhood, with such a keen perception of every absurdity, no matter how passing or small. Nothing escapes her vision. I want… show more.

Not just a coming-of-age story, but definitely with elements of it, Patricia Lockwood’s memoir about growing up with a Catholic priest for a father is riotously funny and filled with some of the best descriptions and metaphors I’ve ever read. If you think Lockwood’s father being a priest is strange, that’s just the beginning of the wild, real characters—with scenes including her father playing electric guitar in his underwear in the rectory. And the book is filled with insights into family and writing and faith and health and all kinds of other subjects. I’ve recommended this to multiple friends and… show more.