Priestdaddy

Pick it up: If you are in the mood for a mad cap memoir filled with family eccentricity and dysfunction. Or to help make sense (humour always helps) of vastly opposing religious beliefs within the family. Lastly, pick it up if you just want poetic prose that will also have you in splits frequently.

A hilariously irreverent and deeply moving memoir that explores the author's unconventional upbringing as the daughter of a Catholic priest. 

Lockwood leaves home at the age of 19 to marry Jason, a fellow poet whom she first meets on the internet. After 12 years away, Jason develops a rare eye condition and needs surgery. When there are complications and Jason needs further procedures, the couple are broke at the end of it. Their only option is to temporarily move back to the family rectory in Missouri (a sign outside the house reads “God answers knee-mail”). During their nine-month stay, Lockwood takes to “jotting down everything everyone says, as fast and free as it comes out of their mouths." The outcome is this deliciously funny memoir.

Her father, a former submarine officer turned priest (one of the few Catholic priests with a wife and family, requiring special dispensation from the Pope), is a central figure, and the book is filled with his larger-than-life personality - his total lack of interest in pants, his obsession with his guitar collection, his practice of cleaning his guns in front of his daughters' boyfriends, and other often-bizarre behaviour. Standing next to him might make Lockwood's mother seem almost normal, but she is an original and eccentric character as well, and I found myself in splits reading about her inexplicable religious views and obsessions.

This unplanned return to her childhood home makes Lockwood confront the lingering effects of her unique upbringing. It's not all laughs and there are parts of the narrative that are darker, but the silliness overrides and in the end this is a family that gets along despite their wildly differing views.