A review by bookook
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

emotional funny reflective medium-paced

5.0

Incredible - a real "bumblebee sting to the clit," as the author'  husband suggests as a blurb for her first published poetry collection. This book is hard to describe and deeply weird and very lovable. I don't really know what else to say, so I'm just going to copy in some of my favorite excerpts. Too hard to pick!

"Just look at him,” Jason says, with something approaching awe, all five of the journalistic Ws present in his eyes, plus a single shining H. But faith and my father taught me the same lesson: to live in the mystery, even to love it.

“Who knows what a freak might do,” my mother hissed, which sounded almost like a philosophical koan. Who DOES know what a freak might do. Could God make a freak so big even he didn’t know what it might do?

If it had been a letter, Jason would have snatched it out of my hand and clasped it to his heaving breast. Instead, he makes me read the email to him over and over, until my voice begins to sing in its familiar course. “You did it,” he says, bursting into tears. “This is just like when an animal succeeds in a movie.”