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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
Wow! There is some great storytelling here. The scene of the greased pole contest was extremely vivid. I really enjoyed the way the relationships were captured.
I stayed up until 3 in the morning to finish the last third of this book. I really enjoyed the slow unfolding of Hawley's backstory and Loo's process of discovery. The subtle mythological references were a nice touch--though I didn't make the connection to Herakles, naming a boat Cassandra and then Pandora was a great bit of foreshadowing.
I just don’t think this one was for me. It’s like those movies I want to love but just can’t. There’s so much fluff in here that doesn’t really add to the story, and this could’ve been really quite amazing if it was more of a novella. I didn’t really care for any of the characters, and most of the descriptions of Hawley’a many bullet wounds just didn’t add enough for me to care that they were included.
Wow. I loved the Good Thief, and this was just as good. I actually had to put the book down and walk away a number of times because I just couldn't take the drama and suspense. My son tried to tell me it was only fiction, but what does he know?
Someone described this as John Green meets a Quentin Taratino movie and I think that is 100 % accurate. I really liked this. It was brutal at times, but also strangely emotional and touching and even funny. Very unique. Good stuff.
I don't usually give trigger warnings, but if you are not cool with descriptions of people getting shot, then this is not the book for you. Think Quentin Tarantino on the page.
I don't usually give trigger warnings, but if you are not cool with descriptions of people getting shot, then this is not the book for you. Think Quentin Tarantino on the page.
Twelve year old Loo lives a transient life with her father Samuel and his guns. It is the only life she can remember. Then one day he decides it is time to settle down. He takes them to his dead wife's hometown of Olympus, Massachusetts, and buys a house. There they try to make a life with the somewhat usual difficulties of people new to a small town, although maybe more so.
Woven in between the chapters about their life in Olympus are the stories of how Samuel received each of his 12 bullet wounds. No, he was not a soldier; he was a criminal. Hence the guns and the bear rug actually.
I liked this book. I didn't love it. I must have been feeling generous the day I gave it 4 stars. I feel like it is more of a low 3.5 star book.
Woven in between the chapters about their life in Olympus are the stories of how Samuel received each of his 12 bullet wounds. No, he was not a soldier; he was a criminal. Hence the guns and the bear rug actually.
I liked this book. I didn't love it. I must have been feeling generous the day I gave it 4 stars. I feel like it is more of a low 3.5 star book.
Parent are mysterious creatures, at least from the perspective of their children. I doubt any parent is as mysterious as Samuel Hawley. Though he is a devoted father to Loo, Hawley carries around a platoon’s worth of guns and ammunition, knows how to hot wire cars, and is always looking for an escape route. Loo doesn’t think this is strange, nor does she think it’s strange that her father has so many scars from bullet wounds. As Hannah Tinti’s novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, unspools, we start to learn the mysteries behind the scars and find a wonderfully criminal story of a mostly functional family...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
This book showed an interesting relationship between a father and daughter. I liked it because of that. But the violence was difficult.
Kinda makes me want to have a daughter and teach her how to shoot lots o guns and be a badass hardened criminal like me. Very murdery and crimey, and you get to imagine a young Clint Eastwood-type man as a dad. Would recommend based entirely on that.
I liked this book throughout but by the end I loved it.