Patricia Lockwood is the daughter of a Catholic priest'”and that is actually the blandest fact about her. She is one in a million, a fresh and honest and hilarious observer of life. And Father Lockwood is one in a million as well'”a priest who takes the Lord seriously, even though he’s most comfortable when half nude and jamming on his electric guitar in the living room.

In her memoir Priestdaddy, Lockwood explains not only how her father entered the priesthood despite the existence of her and her four siblings but so much more, including how to fall in love and marry over the internet, how to behave at an anti-abortion rally when you are four years old, which cream liqueurs are the most alcoholic, what to do when your father trades your college education for a guitar previously owned by a Beatle, and how to road trip with a mother who fears sexually-tainted motel comforters.

The big answer to all of these questions, at least as far as Lockwood goes, is to apply an acerbic and brilliant sense of humor plus a strong sense of compassion and a total lack of sanctimony, to whatever'”and I mean, whatever'”life serves up.

The book begins with Lockwood and her husband moving back into her family home in Kansas City, a move forced upon them by illness and poverty. The couple have endured some terrible months and yet I was laughing by page two, and I continued laughing for the next three hundred pages. Sometimes my laughter was mixed with tears, either from laughing too hard ('œMy father despises cats. He believes them to be Democrats. He considers them to be little mean hillary clintons covered all over with feminist legfur') or due to the inescapable pathos of the moment, frankly related: 'œIf the church teaches anything, it’s that sometimes we have to answer for what other people have done. Let me do it by standing up and walking out of the countinghouse, and saving my number for the smaller side.'

Lockwood uses the nine months she and her husband remain uncomfortably living with her parents as the springboard for examining her extraordinary upbringing by two very eccentric individuals, and the impact such a childhood has had on her adult life. She explores her contentious relationship with religion, her self-questioning over faith and duty and family, and her eventual parting with the church. And yet it became clear to me that while Lockwood ultimately rejects the practices of modern-day Catholicism, she appears to have taken away the very best of its tenets: she approaches life open to every feeling and nuance, every vision and insight, and she expresses herself freely and beautifully. Her poetry has been heralded for its ingenuity, honesty, humor, and grit, and the same qualities come through in this, her first, and hopefully not her last, book of prose.