Not mentioning cell phones had to have been deliberate, so as give the story a timeless feel rather than a modern one. Clearly, Tinti kept the era vague on purpose, since she never, ever mentions a year and 32 of them are covered in the book.
But let’s see…Hawley had Ring Dings on his 8th birthday, so he couldn’t have been born prior to 1950. The diaper genie was a thing in American households by 1995. He’s 30 when he meets Lily, and Loo is born about a year later, since we know Hawley is in his forties when she’s 12. Let’s throw in the fact that the Firebird was made between 1967 and 2002, and it was Lilly’s car before Loo got it. Hawley is 16 when the story begins. Loo is 17 when the story ends, and anybody can use a computer to alter a car registration…
So if the diaper genie is accurate, I’d say Hawley was born in 1964 and the book covers the time period between 1980 and 2012. If the diaper genie is an error, I’d push it back ten or twelve years on account of the phone thing, and make it around 1968 to 2000.
It was fun trying to figure that out, but also kind of beside the point, because I don’t think we’re supposed to think about a social/historical timeline for this story…it’s too fantastic for that (fantastic in the sense of “conceived by an unrestrained imagination”).
@Mary13 , the nugget about the cover pleases me so much! I read the book on Kindle but then found a giveaway copy at a book exchange. I hadn’t looked at it closely until today. It’s a really lovely cover (and I work with graphic designers who’d have been happy to think that up).
Count me among the book’s admirers. I was engrossed in the story and found myself rooting for both Hawley and Loo, bad as they were! Especially Loo-- I could see the life forces that shaped her and how she responded to them, and hoped by the end she would transcend them. Hawley, yes, was awful, but look how he started out, orphaned/abandoned at an early age. A better character might have faced those obstacles and made better decisions-- but I found it deliciously awful to see how he managed to turn wrong every time.
(His love for Lily was weird. The bathroom shrine, ew! But once he gained some maturity/perspective, he was a sort of a good dad for Loo. A protector/advocate, though surely not a role model. Though, again, Loo didn’t know all about all his escapades from the past.)
I never worried about whether the book was believable. There was a genuineness to the characters that made me believe in them. The crazy adventures just carried me along like a … sailboat in a current. I couldn’t stop reading, except when I had to pause to calm myself down and remind myself that there were still more bullets ahead, so Hawley wasn’t going to die after #5 or #6.
I think my favorite detail was the money in the jars, hidden under licorice candy and in the back of the toilet! Now I have to think how that detail relates to the larger themes … protection, yes, but time or love? Hmmmm
Hannah Tinti has said Samuel Hawley, like Hercules, is a “tainted hero.” For all Hawley’s crimes—and they are legion—he’s not as tainted as Hercules, who murders his own wife and children. Hercules’ Twelve Labors are his path to redemption. This is sort of flipped in the book, i.e., the Twelve Bullets are Hawley’s crimes, and the alternate chapters of his life with Loo (and his apparently celibate devotion to the long-dead Lily) are his path to redemption.
In each of the Bullet stories, though, we do see the better man trying to emerge. In all of these chapters, Hawley establishes a brief, human connection with another character, either a victim or a bystander: the young woman with the baby in the motel room (Bullet Number Two), Maureen Talbot (Bullet Number Three), Nunn’s girlfriend in the trailer, whom Hawley makes certain is out of harm’s way (Bullet Number Ten), etc. Even at his worst, he tries to be…courteous, if not exactly good.
There are some folks even today who live “off the grid” so to speak. It’s rare, but not inconceivable. If you have a cell phone, you can be tracked. If you want to disappear, you most certainly would not have one.
Regarding the ending, I’m another one who thinks Hawley dies at the end. There was something symbolic, in my mind, about his giving Loo the bullet-proof vest he was wearing, like it was the final act of protection. And then he added an additional layer (the life preserver), which of course, set up the whole scene of her going overboard after being shot at. Loo then goes on to navigate the waters, by way of the stars, and somehow you know she’ll be okay in life. I was really absorbed by all of this, except when that whale made an appearance…enough already!
Well, I looked at the legend of Hercules (just the Wikipedia page and the poem Mary had in her first post) and I’m happy to report that I don’t think there’s a one to one correspondence - at least not anything super obvious. That said there are some echoes. The Nubian Lion that Hercules slays in his first labor and then wears like a cape is not unlike that bearskin rug that various people get wrapped up in along the way. There’s Hercules cleaning the stables by diverting a river (5th Labor) which reminded me of Bullet No. 6 when the calving glacier causes the sudden rise in water level of the river, but the 6th labor does bear some resemblence as it involves scaring away birds with extra loud castenets. I can find some parallels for other ones as well.
@psychmom, I wondered “why?” about the second whale as well. Since I was fully into “myth mode” by that point int the novel, I wondered if it was supposed to represent the spirit of Lily in some way, sort of how the seal-wife raises up the fisherman’s boat in “The Selkie Girl.”
Not to harp on the whale, but I did a bit of sleuthing to find the significance because the whale seemed like such an exaggeration, taking me away from those scenes in the book. Apparently, whales have personal meaning to Tinti, who studied marine biology in college. While writing this book, she was at a low point in her life, and when her mind conjured up the whale, she decided to go for it! (And she did, lol!) Here’s an excerpt I found:
“For example, at one point, when I was writing The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, a whale showed up in a scene. At first I thought, “Dear God, who the hell do you think you are? You’re not a good enough writer to have a whale in your book.” It’s not only because of the giant, looming shadow of Melville—there’s a cheesiness to whales, too, that can easily feel overdone. But when you’re a writer waiting without hope, it doesn’t matter. I told myself that no one was ever going to read about my lame-ass whale. So why not leave it in the book, and instead challenge myself to try and make it work? I’m so glad that I didn’t follow my fears and cut that humpback, because it ended up being a really important part of the story, and wove together many elements about the nature of life and death that I was trying to explore.”
@mathmom: I used that same link plus the one in post #1 (courtesy of @Mary13).
The one-to-one is closer than is obvious at first glance.
Labor and Bullet #1. Hercules slays the Nubian Lion and wears its skin; Hawley flees the house he and Jove rob wearing the bear skin.
Labor and Bullet #2: Hercules slays a “monstrous serpent with nine heads, the hydra attacked with poisonous venom”; Hawley slays the man who kills the two men in the motel and intends to kill him and the young girl with baby - the killer has a snake with nine heads tattooed on his arm.
Labor and Bullet #3: Hercules needs to capture the deer and bring it unharmed; Hawley and Jove need to retrieve the invaluable watch (with deer design) and get it to King unharmed.
Labor and Bullet #4: Hercules hunted a wild boar; Hawley meets Ed King at a diner with “a sign with the name in lights and a cartoon drawing of a giant hairy pig with tusks …”
Labor and Bullet #5: Hercules needs to clean the Aegean Stables - he involves a boy who ends up leaving his home; Hawley, amidst mud, meets Charlie and ends up helping him leave his home.
Labor and Bullet #6: Hercules and the Stymphalian Birds (Some versions of the legend say that these Stymphalian birds were vicious man-eaters.); Hawley deals with two women - definitely vicious. Other similarities include the secluded location and the noise engendered by clappers (Hercules) or calving glacier (Hawley).
But oops I quit reading the Labors beforehand as I hit Bullets Seven, Eight, and Nine, thinking I’d return when I had more time. 8-| I’m pretty sure that Hercules’ Amazons (Labor 9) and Lily’s death correspond in certain ways (ship/boat, etc) but am out of time for now so can’t look at Labors 7 and 8 and and see how they fit with Hawley’s bullets 7,8, and 9.
@ignatius LOL, I was just going off my scribbled notes about each bullet - wow I missed a lot of details! Good sleuthing!
What an interesting interview about the whale, I’m always interested in how writers work. I have a friend who wrote a novel where a character puts on a pair of mirrored sunglasses early on. This was at a point when they were really out of style and my friend thought she was being kind of cheesy, but then when she got to the end they became a critical part of the plot. She said she had no idea that she would use them later.
I read a “Labor” before I read the corresponding detail, so was able to pick up the details easily. However, when I hit Bullets 7,8, and 9, I didn’t have computer access so just read thinking I’d get back to it. But never did; I wish I had because it really is interesting.
If you don’t mind indulging me, I want to share one more observation about the timeline in Samuel Hawley. I passed the book along to my daughter, who is a great reader of fantasy, and she said that Hannah Tinti is writing a story “out of time.” The years cannot be accurately pinpointed because although the novel’s world shares similar characteristics with the one we live in, it doesn’t directly correlate. Cell phones aren’t erroneously missing in Samuel and Loo’s world; they never existed.
The closest example I can think of is “The Walking Dead.” The word “zombie” is never said in the show because the story takes place in an alternate world that is nearly identical to ours, except that no zombie culture ever existed before the outbreak — no books, no movies, no memes, no concept of the creature at all.
That makes sense Mary. It’s interesting because time is so important in the movie. There are so many watches and clocks all lovingly described. I think there’s at least one in every chapter. And of course when Lily’s mother isn’t on the train, we learn the times of each of the trains she isn’t on.
Per this interview between Tinti and her editor, she “also imposed another kind of restraint on the novel: each of the Hawley flashback scenes resolve around a clock and a woman.”
“Seven, Eight, Nine” is a painful chapter, with Talbot holding a gun on baby Loo at the beach. He eventually shoots Lily instead, and she disappears beneath the water and dies.
As with the other labors, the connections are subtle. Hercules’ 7th and 8th labors both take place at the seashore. In the 7th Labor, Minos, the King of Crete, “had promised the sea-god Poseidon that he would sacrifice whatever the god sent him from the sea. Poseidon sent a bull, but Minos thought it was too beautiful to kill, and so he sacrificed another bull.”
This is from the 9th Labor – and made me think of Loo and Lily (and her demise):
"Hippolyte was queen of the Amazons, a tribe of women warriors…The Amazons lived apart from men, and if they ever gave birth to children, they kept only the females and reared them to be warriors like themselves.
“Disguised as an Amazon warrior, Hera went up and down the army saying to each woman that the strangers who had arrived were going to carry off the queen.”
In Hercules’ 10th Labor, he journeys to the end of the world and kills Geryon, who has three heads and three sets of legs. Bullet Number Ten is the chapter in which Sam Hawley drives out west and kills Frederick Nunn, Mike and Ike at the prairie dog ranch.
In my mind, this is Hawley’s most unspeakable, unforgivable act. For most of his other bullets, Hawley is caught up in a job that goes bad (the Adirondacks), or he is the victim of circumstances (a calving glacier, a desert motel with a pack of murderous poker players), or he is defending himself (Talbot, King). Granted, Hawley wouldn’t be in those situations if he led a different kind of life, but still — Bullet Number Ten is different because Hawley seeks out Nunn with the sole intent of murdering him.
Nunn doesn’t even strike me as a threat. Their opening conversation with one another is almost genial. But in the end, Hawley is no better than the suicidal Talbot, unable to recover from the loss of his wife. Nunn figures this out pretty quickly:
Ironically, Hawley tells himself he’s killing Nunn (and the witnesses) because he owes Loo “a life without looking over her shoulder” (p. 287), but that’s the life he gives her anyway.
For a long time Tinti seemed to be saying you can’t escape who you are. I don’t think Hawley does, but perhaps Loo will. I think she’ll steer for Polaris and new beginning.
Loo’s future scares me. When she gets violent and angry, she loses control of herself. She seems possessed by an alternative Loo and hurts people without fear or real remorse.
Just finished the book, and loved it. I was swept away with the intimate, yet cosmic, and mythical elements in the story.
I was traveling and unable to finish the book by August 1, and days would pass before I could return to the Hawley/Lilly/Loo saga,and couldn’t wait to get back to Hawley, Lilly and Loo. That is my litmus test for a book.
Irony- I wear a red wristband, Momsdemandaction, and am an avid supporter of gun control legislation.
The emphasis on guns was excessive, and I hope this never becomes a movie, but the Characters and drama overshadowed the focus on guns, killing, revenge, violence and all things gritty.
I haven’t read any author interviews, or one word about Hercules, except for what was mentioned in this discussion. It will be fun to research now.
@SouthJerseyChessMom : The Moms Demand Action thing may have been one of the main reasons I didn’t like the book. I’ve been doing a lot of volunteering for that organization, and I found the shootings in the book just – too much.