This weekend at my aunt's I had more than one relative see Priestdaddy lying around, and ask me with trepidation, "So...what's your book about?" It's possible they were relieved to learn that it's a memoir by a young, liberal woman poet whose father is a Catholic priest (having converted after his kids were born). It's not just the title: Patricia Lockwood carries the same provocativeness and sense of fun throughout her family memoir.

The choice to write about her family and her upbringing came about after a health crisis that led her and her husband, Jason, to move back in with her parents for a period of time. In a house full of giant crucifixes, with her father frequently walking around in only underwear and playing electric guitars loudly and badly, Lockwood decides to play anthropologist, taking detailed notes of her interactions with her parents and other figures in their church life. Chapters shift between stories of that time and stories from her childhood, like the way their dad taught them how to swim or the time her parents took her to protest at an abortion clinic.

Mostly you find yourself laughing at Lockwood's clever and sardonic take on the absurdity of the situations and characters, like the time she and her mom end up in a Hyatt during a road trip, and find suspected cum on the hotel sheets. But there are also some more serious themes woven in, and the last few chapters of the book get more sentimental and poetic. Overall I really enjoyed the read but found my interest dropping off towards the end, as the family stories were overtaken by Lockwood's reflections on the broader meaning of it all.