Usually I am the complainer so I am glad there’s someone doing my job!
I was surprised at how much I liked the book because usually having sympathetic characters is a must for me - and everybody was flawed.
Trying to finish book !
Re: unlikable characters. Yep. Was I rooting for anyone? Not sure I was.
I finished the book on a weekend trip, 6-8 hours in the car each way. If I had not had that road trip, I’m not sure I would have carried on and finished.
I was irritated by the descriptions of Loo’s physical relationship with Marshall. It didn’t seem authentic. A bit too…tidy…and JMO, I always applaud the acknowledgement of birth control in a book.
Did those scenes bother anyone else?
I just finished the book. I fall on the side of liking it.
Same here. I couldn’t read a “bullet” chapter right before turning out my lights at night.
@Midwest67: I don’t find the scenes with Loo and Marshall “tidy” but rather more realistic than not - awkward and painful for Loo. Good advice given by Agnes: Don’t be that girl. (I don’t have the book nearby, so hope that’s close enough to the who and what.)
Looks like @mathmom and I might be in the minority here, but I don’t mind :).
One of the things I liked about the book was its intimate focus on a handful of characters. I know that feeling was the end result of coming away from Pachinko, with its overwhelming cast of characters and multiple tangents. I really appreciated the tightness of Hawley. I also think certain aspects of the book that others found off-putting were actually appealing to me. For example:
No! Or what I really mean to say is…Yes! Just like you’re supposed to believe that Samuel Hawley could be shot (and survive) twelve different times; that a whale could make an appearance beside his boat not once, but twice; that part of a glacier could break off before his very eyes – and so many other occurrences in the novel too numerous to recount. It’s just as much a myth as The Twelve Labors of Hercules. It tries to cloak its mythical nature in a “real” setting that’s just familiar enough for the reader (this reader, anyway) to find it easy to fall into the story. Moby Dick provides the quote for the novel’s epigraph – another whopper of a tale about an unlikable but unforgettable protagonist…and lots of charting by the stars, no doubt.
I didn’t mind their relationship at all. I thought the physical aspect was sweet, especially Marshall drawing the solar system on Loo’s back (this type of romantic gesture would be right up my own daughter’s alley). I was glad to be spared a graphic sex scene.
At first I was surprised by Marshall liking the bad Loo, who could physically beat him. I liked the romantic scene of his drawing on her back. In a leap of face, I could easily see them spending hours on a boat. Their relationship paralleled the principal’s affection for Lily, another “bad” girl, the principal could do for Loo what he could not do for her mother; he protected her at school, and gave her a chance at his restaurant. She shined in the latter. Finally, something she could do well. She was liked by the other waitresses and could handle the customers.
But surprise! Lily has found stability in Olympus, with a house, a b/f, a budding relationship with her grandmother, a job, people who,like and accept her, then poof! Her dad says to,pack up and move on. No resistance at all from an 18 year old who has been feisty for years. Her father gives her an alternative path, to stay with her GM. FA takes out the boat on a suicidal path to avenge his friend. How upset I was to know Loo had snuck onto that boat. Twice I thought she was dead, when she was shot, and when the whale got so,close. By this point, I couldn’t put the book down.
But no … I’m part of that minority.
I agree. I tried to remember to read a “Labor” before each “Bullet” and loved how Tinti incorporated them into her story. Example: First “labor” has Hercules wearing the lion skin at the end. In the first “Bullet” Hawley flees wearing the bear skin and so on. Before the end of the discussion, I hope we pair the two and find Tinti’s matches. I think I missed some.
My vote is somewhere between “loved it” and “didn’t love it.” At various times I found the book to be disjointed, gripping, odd, exciting and unbelievable. I never had the sense that I didn’t want to finish it, but there were several times I was hoping I was almost finished.
I will say I found Hawley to be intriguing – there were many reasons I should have disliked him, yet I didn’t. I’m not sure I ever totally warmed up to Loo, but again, I didn’t dislike her. As @mathmom said, everybody was flawed. That, at least, is authentic!
I’d forgotten that the bearskin appears in the first bullet. I will have to read Hercules. The book made me want to write up a diagram to see exactly what happened in the bullets vs the Olympus chapters. It reminded me a bit of some of the other books we’ve read that use some organizations device to move the plot along. (Like The Luminaries or The Stockholm Octavo) I think that device can be a little precious, and there were definitely moments when I rolled my eyes a bit at some obvious bit of symbolism or metaphor. But mostly I just kept turning the pages.
@mathmom, The Luminaries is what I was thinking of, too – but I prefer how Tinti used the devices in a more compact story.
@ignatius, is there a particular online version of Hercules’ Labors that you would recommend?
@CBBBlinker, I had the sense of “hoping I was almost finished,” but for a different reason: I was afraid that the last chapter was going to mark the end of Hawley and Loo in a giant blaze of glory (or gunfire) and I wanted to get through it quickly with a minimum of reader angst.
Speaking of the end, do you think Hawley survives Bullet Number Twelve? I don’t, but I was deeply grateful that there was no maudlin death scene. That was sort of a trick question, because Hannah Tinti herself doesn’t see him as surviving. Or at least that’s how I interpret this sentence:
(See interview after the questions: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/536836/the-twelve-lives-of-samuel-hawley-by-hannah-tinti/9780812989908/readers-guide/)
Well, I’ll finally chime in.
I didn’t enjoy this book. At. All. Usually, as some of you know, I’ll re-read, or at least re-skim, a book before we begin our discussion, but I had absolutely no desire to do so with this book.
I didn’t feel anything but annoyance and disgust toward Hawley and Loo. I’m still not sure why I"m supposed to give a darn about Hawley. He stole, threatened, and killed innocent people and was very lucky in getting away with it. He had a child, but chose to leave her with her grandmother for several years, until he decided he wanted her again. He gave her an unstable, untethered childhood and didn’t permit her to form other relationships. Other than that, he was a great dad.
As far as Loo was concerned, she did the best she could and was delighted that Marshall loved her. She needed someone to love her, and I’m glad he did. But even after he saw what her father really was, she stuck with him.
The one I felt really sorry for was the grandmother. She lost her daughter, thinks Hawley did it, and then also lost her granddaughter.
The comparisons to Hercules’ labors might be academically interesting, but that doesn’t add to my enjoyment of the book.
I thought about this and decided if he had lived the story would be called The Thirteen Lives of Samuel Hawley.
I felt Hawley had changed, but he felt a loyalty to his old friend too. He knew Loo would be welcomed by her grandmother and that she was more or less launched. I think he felt Jove needed him more than Loo at that point. I am not going to blame Loo for loving her father, who clearly loved her and did his imperfect best for her. I don’t feel sorry for the grandmother. She was a piece of work too, refusing to see the granddaughter for years.
I agree that Hawley is a Bad Man. That’s part of the reason he has to die, he really did some terrible things. But he brings his daughter back to Olympus when he realizes that she needs more of a family and community than he’s been providing.
I think one of the big questions of the book is can we change? When is it too late to change? Is who we are in our genes or is it nurture? I think Loo will escape her destiny, but Hawley and Lily couldn’t.
Yes, he is. I understand the opinion of @VeryHappy (and others): On paper, I can see that it makes no sense to feel sympathy for Hawley; nonetheless, I do. I thought he was complex enough that he earned that. Sometimes, terrible people do good things, and good people do terrible things. I found that to be the case over and over again in Samuel Hawley and that’s one way in which the book was, for me, riveting.
I am going to blame this on the fact that I am binge-watching “Game of Thrones,” where the line between good and evil is mighty thin indeed. Also, I like Cormac McCarthy and his ilk, so I must have a dark streak.
A bit from Hannah Tinti on the structure:
And for those who like covers (the main thing I miss when using a Kindle!):
http://therumpus.net/2017/12/the-rumpus-interview-with-hannah-tinti/
I read my copy of the book from the library and they have taped the two covers firmly together. I could see they were completely different and wondered about that, but I didn’t think the library would appreciate me wrecking their handiwork. I thought the outside cover was kind of ugly, but I coudn’t tell that those were holes because of the extra acetate wrapping and there was an extra white inner layer blocking the images from coming through. Humph to the library!
Another reason I was pretty sure the last bullet was fatal is that Hawley says “Bullets usually go right through me,” and the answer is “This one didn’t.”
I think that, in the end, he went because he felt that as long as the enemies from his past were still alive, that Loo was in danger. His way of “protecting” her was to eliminate any perceived future threat.
Thanks for the cover info, Mary13! Like mathmom, mine is a library copy, so I didn’t notice. Very cool!
I fall down the middle on this one. I didn’t really like any of the characters (though I had sympathy for Loo), the violence bothered me, and I didn’t believe any of it for a minute–but I really enjoyed it and read it almost straight through. I think once I look at the Labours of Hercules I will appreciate it more. I liked the recurrence of 12s, clocks, music, etc.
One thing that bothered me–when was this story supposed to take place? Hawley’s escapades and ability to hide go undiscovered for long stretches (and purchase of a North Shore house in cash) seemed to belong to an earlier era, maybe the 50’s. There was only one reference to a computer, and one to a “military field phone” but no cellphones I could remember. But Lily had a Diaper Genie, which didn’t exist till the 90’s, which would put the ending in this century. I know it’s minor, but that sort of inconsistency drives me nuts.
“One thing that bothered me–when was this story supposed to take place? Hawley’s escapades and ability to hide go undiscovered for long stretches (and purchase of a North Shore house in cash) seemed to belong to an earlier era, maybe the 50’s.”
For a book so infused with the concept of time, it really had a timeless quality…it was hard to get oriented. I think this is party due to the outdoorsy settings and the emphasis on natural elements. The book lacked modern, techy references; in fact, it was the opposite…the timepieces that stood out were ones from the past.
For a book that is so rooted in place, and talks about time constantly, it’s surprising that it doesn’t feel rooted in a particular time period. I agree that it seems to be pre-cell phone ubiquity. Did not know the history of the Diaper Genie, so was not bothered by that detail. (But I’ve been bothered by similar bloopers in other books - it’s all in what you know!) My SIL, says that these sorts of errors get caught much less often than they used to because there are fewer fact checker and editors often work at home not in a big room where they could just ask someone if a car would have had seatbelts in the back in 1963 or if Diaper Genies were a recent invention.
The first bullet didn’t go through him either. Jove had to dig it out with tongs. I wonder if there was a reason Tinti had the first and last bullet lodged inside of him? I didn’t go back to check if there were other bullets that didn’t go through, but I don’t think so.