Patricia Lockwood is a poet, writer, and a absurdist twitter account with a cult following. Despite being a work of comedy at its core, her memoir Priestdaddy is striking in its grace. The way she expresses herself is simply sublime, with her roots in poetry shining through every sentence.

Priestdaddy deals with so many topics it’s hard to pin down. At its core, though, it’s a story of family as Lockwood, along with her husband, move back to Indiana to live at her Catholic parent’s rectory. Switching between her childhood and the present day, Lockwood paints her cast of characters – like her eccentric parents – so vividly, you feel like you know everything about them from one expertly crafted sentence. There are so many memorable lines of dialogue and countless anecdotes in Priestdaddy that are so untenable in their absurdity that they have to be true – and it’s endlessly entertaining.

Where Priestdaddy is truly special is where it changes gears so subtly you don’t even notice. One paragraph Lockwood will be describing her glee in messing with a particularly chaste seminarian. The next, she’s tackling death, sex abuse cover ups within her Parish, and her suicide attempt as an adolescent – and it’s here her poetic language shines the most. In the same way her humour is sometimes blunt in its execution, Lockwood doesn’t shy away from the realities of growing up Catholic and its impacts on growing up.

Equal parts thought-provoking, hysterical and sad, Priestdaddy is absurd, yet magical in its depiction of life and its many pitfalls.

Reviewed by Max Lewis