Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met, a man who lounges in boxer shorts, 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.

“When we came home later, my father was wearing his most transparent pair of boxer shorts, to show us he was angry, and drinking Baileys Irish Cream liqueur out of a miniature crystal glass, to show us his heart was broken.”

This may be my favorite sentence in all of writing.

What makes that sentence good is what makes the whole book good: a comical situation described in the evocative language of a poet. The contradiction that that creates is delightful. And really, it's the larger contradictions that draw you in and hold you. That a priest is married and has lots of children. That a priest likes to play down and dirty metal-hair-band-esque licks on the electric guitar. That a priest would blow his child's college funds for a guitar pre-owned by a rock legend, and truly believe that it couldn't be helped.

That last situation occurs at the start of the book, when everything is still very very funny. But it does presage a seriousness that takes hold 2/3 of the way through the book. The recounting of childhood experiences become more lonesome, the view of her parents' world becomes bleaker. You can really feel the despair of the author as she sees her father act incredibly selfishly towards her mother, towards her siblings, really towards anyone who isn't a priest. He clearly is the most important person in the family, knows it, and acts accordingly.

The change from hilarious to bitingly sad is disappointing because I was having such a good time - I love to laugh. It's also disappointing on purpose, because the author wants us to feel how it was to go back into that toxic environment as an adult, to relive with her the memories in their proper context. The journey is a good one, go ahead and take it.

this memoir quickly devolved into a shapeless short-story collection, but it's all so well written and connected ENOUGH that i still really enjoyed it.