Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

The hilarious and universally lauded memoir of life as the daughter of a gun-toting, all-American Catholic priest.

When the expense of a medical procedure forces the 30-year-old Patricia to move back in with her parents, husband in tow, she must learn to live again with her family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of a childhood spent in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Her father is a gun-toting, all-American, frequently semi-naked priest who underwent a religious conversion after watching The Exorcist 70 times on a Navy submarine; her mother, who emerges as the book's real heart, is a woman preternaturally concerned with the various disasters that could be about to befall her loved ones - and any nearby babies - at all times. Told with a keen comic sensibility that packs a laugh on almost every page, this is at the same time a lyrical and affecting true story of how, having ventured into the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.

Patricia Lockwood

Reviews

“ Betty Boop in a pas de deux with David Sedaris . . . roars from the gate ”

The New York Times

“ Lockwood has produced from her peculiar childhood something that is exceptional - exquisitely written, funny, disturbing and freighted with insight, lightly worn ”

Telegraph

“ Glorious. It crackles with energy and life. It's funny, it's hectic, and it will sometimes trip you up with a sudden sense of anger and pain . . . a genuine original ”

Sunday Times

Paperback

9780141984599

May 3, 2018

Penguin Press

352 pages

RRP $22.99
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Priestdaddy

Patricia Lockwood

EBook

9781846149214

May 18, 2017

Penguin eBooks
Online retailers