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How long does it take to read Priestdaddy?

Patricia Lockwood

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood takes about 6 hours 27 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 6 hours 27 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2017. 352 pages, about 96,800 words.

13 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 10 hours 45 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 6 hours 27 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 2 minutes

The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met, a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972." His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide. In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence, from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cultlike Catholic youth group, with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents' household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother. Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition.

Subjects: Family, Biography, American Authors, American Poets, Women poets, Authors, american

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