Review: Priestdaddy, by Patricia Lockwood

 

Title: Priestdaddy: A Memoir
Author: Patricia Lockwood
Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2017. 336 pages (hardback)
Source: Library digital resources

Publisher's Blurb:

The childhood of Patricia Lockwood, the poet dubbed "The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas" by The New York Times, was unusual in many respects. There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange koans and warnings of impending danger. Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing, frequently semi-naked father, who underwent a religious conversion on a submarine and discovered a loophole which saw him approved for the Catholic priesthood by the future Pope Benedict XVI - despite already having a wife and children.

When the expense of a medical procedure forces the 30-year-old Patricia to move back in with her parents, husband in tow, she must learn to live again with her family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of a childhood spent in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Told with the comic sensibility of a brasher, bluer Waugh or Wodehouse, this is at the same time a lyrical and affecting story of how, having ventured into the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.  


My Review: 

I got this book from the library on the recommendation of a friend, and while it was not my usual reading, it was a good recommendation. Lockwood's language is highly visual, and that nick-name in the blurb is justified, but she made me laugh, as well as cringe.

Having to move back home as a married woman of 30 has to be hard for anyone, but it is particularly weird for Lockwood. Her father is a Catholic priest, and (as far as I can tell) a red-necked good-old-boy to the Nth degree. Where many people might just crawl into their shells and mope, or get into endless fights with parents whose belief system is so completely antithetical to their own, Lockwood takes a course that makes total sense to me: she begins to write a memoir of her childhood and her parents, observing and making notes on everything they say and do. It becomes more and more clear over the course of the book that Lockwood is moderately messed up in her own head, and that it's pretty easy to blame her parents. She manages to resist this urge to an admirable degree, and the book is remarkably non-judgemental.
 

You might wonder how the child of such religious parents gets so far out the other end of the spectrum, but I know myself that the children of preachers tend to either become preachers or atheists (we have both in my family), so in a way it makes perfect sense. And maybe it's partly that unreal world she's raised in that makes Lockwood think she can make a living as a poet (a poor bet, though at the time of writing the book she was starting to make progress, and I'm sure the memoir helped the bottom line). Even in her prose, Lockwood's roots as a poet show, and while sometimes the language slips over the top into too-arty (or too dirty), most of the time it works. I kept reading for both the outrageous story and the outrageous language.
My Recommendation:
I will recommend this, but not for the easily offended, either by naughty language or by irreligion. In fact, I think Lockwood treats her parents' Catholicism with a fair level of respect, but there is no denying it's also under scrutiny, and Lockwood doesn't hide her own feelings. The narrow-minded will almost certainly consider some parts of the book blasphemous.


FTC Disclosure: I checked Priestdaddy out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  

Book Review: Carpe Jugulum

Yes, we're back on the Discworld!  I know I swore off of reviewing Terry Pratchett, because I just kept saying I loved his books, but this one seems to cry out for commentary.  First, the business:

Title:  Carpe Jugulum
Author:  Terry Pratchett
Publisher: Harper Voyager, 1999. I used the HarperCollins ebook edition, 339 pages.
Source: Library (digital version).

Summary:
It seems both futile and arrogant to attempt to summarize one of Pratchett's Discworld novels.  The best I can offer is to say that we are back in Lancre, the land of the witches, and King Verence and Queen Magrat are celebrating the birth of their daughter.  They've invited all the neighbors to the naming ceremony, and that includes the Magpyrs of Uberwald, your friendly neighborhood vampires--or vampyres, as they prefer to spell it (Carpe Jugulum, of course, means "seize the jugular" which is a pretty good predictor for vampires).  Count Magpyr is so totally up-to-date, making sure he and his people can tolerate daylight, garlic, even holy water.  He and his family are also very good at many vampiric skills, including clouding people's minds, and sucking their blood.  They plan to move in and take over, and it's up to the witches, now including Agnes along with Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax, to stop them.

Review:
This is a tongue-in-cheek thriller, with all the suspense and twice the humor of any spy novel.  Twice the humor?  Probably way more than that.  But there was also complex character development, and a chance to see the witches each grow in new ways, making it seem more novelistic than some of Pratchett's work.  Granny Weatherwax proves she's even more powerful than we thought.  Nanny Ogg proves she can (sometimes) think of something besides sex.  Agnes finds out that having another self occupying her brain isn't all bad, and Magrat discovers she can be both mother, queen, and witch, and have a more interesting life that way.

I found myself trying to figure out how Pratchett was going to save Lancre from the Magpyrs, and I really couldn't see it.  I knew he would, of course.  I just had no idea how he would get there (except being pretty sure Granny Weatherwax would swoop in just in time.  But even she looked pretty seriously inadequate to the task at hand).

And all the time, Pratchett keeps up a running sub-theme satirizimng religion.  He raises points like the difficulty of keeping faith when one reads a lot, and the difference between praying about a problem and doing something about it.  (For those who are sensitive on such issues, Pratchett is an unashamed and vocal atheist.  I happen to enjoy that.  If you don't, you may not like his work, though in my opinion it's always worth seeing and understanding the criticisms of any belief system to which one subscribes).

The final putting of the vampyres in their place is a thing of beauty and a joy, and I for one will happily read about the witches any time.  Highly recommended for all fans of Pratchett, witches, the absurd, and any foolish teens with silly ideas about vampires (they'll hate it, but maybe learn some important lessons).

#

Full Disclosure: I borrowed Carpe Jugulum from my (online) library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

D: Disc World

Reviewing Small Gods, a Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett.

(For the record, yes, I am working hard and stretching a bit to make this alphabet thing work out.  Wanna make something of it?).

Note: Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are incredible fun and great satire. . . and suitable for young adults and up.  He's also brilliantly irreverent, so if that bothers you, watch out!

For anyone who isn't familiar with the books, Sir Terry Pratchett invented the Discworld, a disc-shaped planet held up by four elephants who stand on the back of the great A'tuin, the giant turtle.  Discworld, being flat, has given Pratchett a great platform for many, many satirical novels which send up everything from Hollywood (see Moving Pictures) to religion (which brings us to Small Gods).

 First, Small Gods is about belief as much as it is about religion, and maybe is best summed up, after nearly a whole book sending up religion (and noticing how seldom real faith happens, and pretty much accusing the leaders of religion of believing in nothing but themselves), by the following passage.  Simony, a cynical soldier who believes in nothing, addresses the god Om, who has just made himself rather obvious and undeniable, about the need to reconstruct the country.

"Will you help?"
VI.  And Brave, Too, To Declare Atheism Before Your God. [responds the god]
"This doesn't change anything, you know!" said Simony.  "Don't think you can get round me by existing!"

I'm tempted to leave my review right there, but I suppose there ought to be more. 

When Pratchett gets hold of the gods, he figures out a few things.  For one, the gods exist to the degree that they have believers, real believers.  In the case of Om, when the story opens, he has exactly one: Brutha, a novice in the temple in Omnia, and apparently a half-wit.  All the other Omnians believe in themselves, and in the usefulness of religion.   As is usually the case, of course, Brutha's half a wit proves better than most people's whole wits, and his faith is strong enough to allow him to disagree with his god, and forge his own way to what is right and good.  He may, in fact, be the only person in all the lands encompassed by the tale who gives a poop about justice and kindness.  This, as the Omnian  religious leaders find out the hard way, makes him a very dangerous man.

Other great characters (including those used to make fun of philosophy and technology) are Didactylos and his nephew (and philosophical apprentice cum engineer) Urn, and Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, who sells things to the religious tourists.  Much of what he sells is supposedly edible, and "onna stick."  Then there's Om.  Nothing like a Great God who has tried to turn himself into a bull or something, and ends up stuck as a tortoise.  It's really hard to be god-like when you move that slowly, and even worse when you can't manage even a bit of lightning.  And if he can't keep Brutha alive, he's dead, because a god with no believers is done.

One final thought, which is also a "D" thought.  I wonder what my Dad, who was a Presbyterian minister (and taught me an appreciation for irreverence, though I may have taken it a bit farther than he wanted. . . ) would have thought of the book?  I have a sneaking feeling he might have approved.