Priestdaddy

Publisher's Summary

From Patricia Lockwood - a writer acclaimed for her wildly original voice - a vivid, heartbreakingly funny memoir about having a married Catholic priest for a father.

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met - a man who lounges in boxer shorts, who loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972". His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.

In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence - from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cultlike Catholic youth group - with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents' household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother.

Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition.

©2017 Patricia Lockwood (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Critic Reviews

"Patricia Lockwood's side-splitting Priestdaddy puts the poetry back in memoir. Her verbal verve creates a reading experience of effervescent joy, even as Lockwood takes you through some of her life's darker passages. Destined to be a classic, Priestdaddy is this year's must-read memoir." (Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club)

"Beautiful, funny and poignant. I wish I'd written this book." (Jenny Lawson, author of Furiously Happy)

" Priestdaddy is a revelatory debut, a meditation on family and art that finds poetry in the unlikeliest things, including poetry. Patricia Lockwood's prose is nothing short of ecstatic; every sentence hums with vibrant, anarchic delight, and her portrait of her epically eccentric family life is funny, warm, and stuffed to bursting with emotional insight. If I could write like this, I would." (Joss Whedon)

Holy Smutty Metaphors!

Lockwood is a new author to me. If I was hip, I'd have heard of Lockwood prior to buying this starred darling. I'd have known that the NY Times has crowned Lockwood the "smutty-metaphor queen." She has a big Twitter following and is the author of a book of poetry, "Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals." Lockwood is also a boundary pushing comic with an acerbic wit and a long windup into a delivery that packs a punch to your thinking process.

Lockwood as an author is a fantastic writer with a keen sense of observation. Her stories in this memoir are skillfully told with heart; her narrative smoothly slips from quirky hilarity into depths of sincere revelation. Daddy was a former Lutheran minister, married with children when he is compelled to convert to Catholicism. Granted a "dispensation" from Rome, he is "allowed to keep his wife....even allowed to keep his children, no matter how bad they might be." It is later revealed that his case was reviewed by Joseph Ratzinger, who we now know becomes Pope Benedict XVI. Living with a Catholic Priest, the family also shares the life of a priest and his flock from an intimate vantage point. Lockwood not only sees different lives and circumstances, she has a compassion that sees the perspectives.

The style reminded me of Mic Night at the local bookstore, where poets and storytellers get up and share their latest writings. The words weighted and paused for timing, the occasional interjection of a word or event meant to produce some level of shock in the listener, as you sip coffee or wine. You've no desire to attend the performance but you're dragged by a friend. It's good to get out, see friends, and somehow you end up enjoying the performances. That was this book for me. If I was more familiar with the work of Lockwood, I would have passed; NOT for any reason other than it is not a format or a genre I enjoy. Everything was top rate: the writing the content, the narration -- especially the narration by the author herself which adds another dimension -- it was not for me. I hope that my personal opinion doesn't dissuade anyone interested in this book.

27 of 31 people found this review helpful

Jesus would dig.

You will too. If you're : an artist / remain perplexed by the mysteries of the Catholic Church / have become indifferent to the mysteries of the Catholic Church / have ever found yourself drawn to contemplative life while simultaneously being repelled religious doctrine / or simply have dark humors coursing though your bod that need to be let- this book is for you. P.L. shares scenes from her life behind the doors of the rectory-- yet remains generous and funny.

And the narration? C'mon! Only SHE could convey her gentleness, anger, and distinctively weird comic timing so perfectly. I think her voice is pure chrism.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Such a fresh voice and vivid details. Loved it.

I didn't want it to end. wanted more. Such a fresh voice and vivid details. Loved it.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Unadulterated word porn

This is poetry for those who don't like poetry. It tickled my little grammar pleasure center. It also told me a story about myself in ways that I never could have put to words. I think if I listened to it three times I might encounter the Holy Trinity... but if I listened to it six times I might also stumble across 33 and 1/3 percent of the devil.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Terrible narration--read, don't listen

This is a great example of why authors should think long and hard before they narrate their own books. Few have the skill to do so. This narration emphasized the weak points of the writing and overwhelmed the good. The only word I can think of to describe the prose is "florid"...why use one metaphor when five in row might be better? (Because it makes you sound like the winner of the bad poetry/prose contest) Often the descriptions are hilariously overwrought. "The procession passed like a snake's lingerie". What? Still, there's a great story here, interesting characters, and thought provoking insights. It is truly unfortunate these are buried neck deep in downright annoying voices. All of the characters sound like they are coming out of the mouth of a middle school actress overplaying every line, trying to reach the back of the theatre. The mother's voice is a cross between the Wicked Witch and one of the Kardashian sisters. Priestdaddy's voice belongs in Wayne's World, a lunatic stoner. That guy is saying Mass? The main character's tone is so relentlessly snarky--insufferable,sneering adolescent--that you can't stand the girl. When the narrator occasionally dialed down her "performance" and spoke in a believable, authentic way, it was a beautiful calm in the middle of a storm of bad acting. This was a challenging book to narrate. The author wasn't up to the task and did her own writing a great disservice.

18 of 22 people found this review helpful

An Original Voice. An Original Thinker.

I want to be careful about the way in which I write about this book. Not because the subject matter is scandalous (it's not), but because, like all beautifully complex things, it'd be easy to mislabel or to put Lockwood's memoir in a box; to diminish its magnificence and, ultimately, the spell it cast over me. It deserves more than that. So, I'll say this: great writers are often lauded for having an original voice. Well, Lockwood has that and then some (including an amazing and amazingly absurd sense of humor). More importantly, she's an original thinker whose devotion to language and words and poetry - her primary trade - can be felt in every line, every turn of phrase, and every bit of confounding imagery that seems to reveal some hidden, intangible truth that normally exists just outside of fingertips' reach.

8 of 10 people found this review helpful

Buy.This.Book!!

If you love bigger-than-life characters, read this book. If you love the Midwest, read this book. But most of all, if you love stunning and evocative combinations of words that create vivid settings, feelings and people, read this book. Patricia Lockwood's memoir blows the roof off the genre, super-charged by her ability to see in metaphor, to hear in color. She's a poet first, and she's wickedly funny as well - although in my opinion, her observations on women and Catholicism are even better then her hilarious captures of her strange family. The best book I've read in a long, long time.

Lockwood herself is the narrator, a fey voice for a fresh literary voice. Her performance is a superb match for her words.

6 of 8 people found this review helpful

Singular

What a singular experience -- strangely hilarious, poignant, insightful, profane, and extremely poetic (unsurprising, given that Lockwood is a poet). This does not read like a standard memoir, it is not entirely linear and it not only concentrates on the author's father as a central force, but also explores her mother, siblings, and husband. She manages to turn an honest eye to some of the grave problems that plague the Catholic church, but does so with sensitivity and wit, an insider's view to how some things go unsaid and stay hidden. Lockwood also weaves in her own gradual separation from being a practicing Catholic while still being immersed in the Church due to her upbringing and family, that sometimes fraught balance between what she believes and what some of the members of the Church believe. Her prose is vibrant and immediate, her characterizations sometimes feel nearly fictional or satirical, the dialog bizarre and interesting and sometimes R-rated. This was unlike anything I've ever read, but I can see why it has shown up on so many best of lists. And Lockwood is an excellent narrator of her own work. Highly recommended.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

A surprise read.

I feel enlightened about the Catholic religion’s inner workings as seen through the eyes of one of it’s children. Being a former member of the catholic religion I found I was sensitive to it’s revelations. I didn’t find it funny. Perhaps one day I’ll give it another listen and see the humor. Even so, I think it is a good book to listen to as it puts another perspective on the idea of religion. Perhaps I’m the only person who feels this way. Give it a read and let me know.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

It would be better to read the book, not to listen

What made the experience of listening to Priestdaddy the most enjoyable?

nothing--the listening experience was poor

What didn’t you like about Patricia Lockwood’s performance?

It's often not good to have authors read their own work. In this case a very good memoir was destroyed by not being able to be understood. The author's voice is dull, gravelly, monotonous, depressing, whispery, and drifts off at the end of the sentences. There were whole chapters I could not understand. I was thinking of returning it and getting the hard copy instead. It's impossible to focus on what she's saying.

Any additional comments?

Read the book, forget about the audible one.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

The eccentric and quirky life of a Catholic family

This is an intriguing memoir about the author's experiences of living in an unconventional, but highly religious family, with a Catholic gun-toting priest for a father. It is highly sarcastic, and hilarious at times, reading about Patricia Lockwood's family antics. When I first began this autobiography, I honestly believed it was set in the 1960s as her father disallows the sisters to go to college, instead spending money on guitars, and describing the effects of living next to a radioactive plant. But lo and behold, Lockwood is writing about only a decade ago.

She leads an eccentric lifestyle, following in her family's footsteps, writing poetry and travelling across the US after a marrying a man off the internet. But it also reveals her doubts about their customs and practices, and how she questions the function of the church - especially with claims of molestation. An interesting and enjoyable listen.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

surprising, moving and original

I loved hearing the author read her own work and give voice to the characters. This made the experience so complete. She plays with language and confidently dives into lyrical asides sometimes just for the pleasure of it. This book feels raw and honest and beautiful ... and very funny too.