Priestdaddy

Priestdaddy

Patricia Lockwood

Enjoyment: 4.5Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 3.5
📿
😂

The childhood of poet Patricia Lockwood was unusual in many respects. There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange riddles and warnings of impending danger. Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing, frequently semi-naked father, who underwent a religious conversion on a submarine and found a loophole which saw him approved for the Catholic priesthood by the future Pope Benedict XVI, despite already having a wife and children. When an unexpected crisis forces Lockwood and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, she must learn to live again with the family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of her religious upbringing. Pivoting from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the serious, Priestdaddy is an unforgettable story of how we balance tradition against hard-won identity—and of how, having journeyed in the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.


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  • Reading Update from 26%

    Scream laughing (internally, because I read when baby naps lol) I wish I started with this and followed with "No One is Taking About This" because I think I would have connected with it more but I'm in love with Lockwood regardless

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  • verbava
    Mar 24, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    мемуари цілковито законної дочки католицького священника – це й так рідкісна птиця, а патриція локвуд, до всього, прекрасно пише. як же прекрасно вона іноді пише: A seminarian is an unborn priest, who floats for nine years in the womb of education, and then is finally born between the bishop’s legs into a set of exquisite robes.

    локвуд розповідає про культуру, у якій виросла, з очуднювальною цікавістю антропологині, і від цього буває неймовірно весело: His understanding of my childhood religion hasn’t deepened much since we first met. As far as I can tell, he considers a priest to be a sort of strict male witch, and he can’t figure out why Catholics want to eat so much flesh all the time.

    це смішна книжка – until it isn't. мені цього року щастить на книжки, які починаються легко і смішно, а потім набувають понуріших тонів, аж до розчленувань у ванні. щоправда, про ванну – це не в локвуд: тут похмуре значно приземленіше й передбачуваніше. її батька, як екзотичного священника із законною сім'єю, переводили для заспокоєння вірних у ті парафії, де з попередніми, целібатними священниками виникали проблеми. не завжди, але зокрема педофільні. глибоко вкорінені у клерикальній системі, яка запрограмована на викривлене сприйняття світу (After his ordination, particular friendships with women will be discouraged. I understand why, but in a wider sense, it is frightening. If you are not friends with women, they are theoretical to you). і те, що юна патриція складала з пліток, чуток і уламків фраз, доросла проговорює й осмислює бодай на сторінках книжки – бо з місцевим єпископом проговорити не дуже вдається. (багатьом іншим людям із іншими ієрархами, зрештою, теж).

    але в цій книжці є значно більше, ніж про церкву. і навіть те, що про церкву, часто виявляється про значно більше. мій улюблений фрагмент – це мало не маніфест про стосунки з вірою, мовою і світом: When I look at them, I think: to prize traditionalism above all else in a church that began in revolution is to do a great violence to it. But I feel that same ache for the past in myself: to uphold the columns of literature, grammar, the Western tradition. The English language began as an upheaval; I am not protecting it when I try to guard it against change. The Jesus Christ of it, Chaucer, walked across the water telling dirty jokes, made twenty stories stretch to feed a million people, spelled the word “cunt” five ways, performed miracles. Any innovation I put down on paper is an attempt to remind myself of this. I am not modern. I was not born to blaze new paths or bring down walls. I break form against my nature to tell myself that revolution, too, is a tradition that must be upheld.

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  • PageWanderer
    Mar 23, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    It feels more like a performance than a genuine sharing of her life. While her family and upbringing are unique, they often feel like caricatures, designed primarily to entertain rather than offer true insight.
    She sacrifices any depth or introspection for comic effect. Sometimes she touches on profound ideas only to gloss over them, leaving me wanting more substance amid the humor and eccentricity.

    Lockwood’s writing skill is undeniable. Yet, the overwritten, joke-laden style overshadows any narrative structure, turning what could have been a compelling story into a series of disjointed anecdotes.

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  • happyplaces
    Mar 27, 2025
    Enjoyment: 4.5Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 3.5
    😂
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    Laughed out loud many many many times. Thoroughly enjoyed this one by Lockwood!

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