Priestdaddy

I love Lockwood's writing and will definitely look up some of her poetry and possibly her novel, but this didn't really work for me. The good bits are good: she is funny, and sharp, and cutting - a lot like David Sedaris. But unlike his pithy tales there is a lack of direction here.

I also suspect a lack of honesty, which is a killer for a memoir. Clearly her father is a pain in the ass, bordering on absent or unloving, but she paints him as a loveable buffoon.

Worse is the fact that clearly Lockwood is a modern woman, probably feminist, very liberal, and yet there is absolutely zero reckoning with the wrongdoings of the Catholic Church, that well known and multi-faceted criminal organisation. There's an awkward discussion with “the seminarian” where she suggests that one of his pals is possibly a serial child abuser, but when he embarrassedly mutters excuses, she just feels shame that she might have been wrong (when she clearly isn't). She suggests no one really knows why her mother “hates nuns so much” - even though her mother has said “Sister liked to spank”, as if that's not enough. As if the crimes of nuns in charge of so-called schools and laundries and any other institution weren't well known to be horrific and abusive ‘care givers'.

I get that one of the most prolific and disgusting crimes of Catholicism is the doctrine of original sin, and the fact that all children are taught that they are inherently evil and therefore should despise themselves, but seeing this guilt and shame revealed in the cowardice of this memoir is tragic, as well as uninteresting. I'd have preferred something a bit more cathartic and excoriating.

Favourite quote, that describes exactly the enjoyment of my own totally pointless English Literature degree:

Singing down into yourself was called vocal masturbation, and you weren't supposed to do it, even though in literature there were postmodernists running around all over the place wanking themselves into recursive frenzies and getting awards for it.