Scan barcode
echory's review
2.0
Everyone in this book needs therapy. I found it really hard to get behind anyone in this book.
novelvisits's review
5.0
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti
Publisher: The Dial Press
Release Date: March 28, 2017
Length: 400 pages
Originally at: http://www.novelvisits.com/twelve-lives-samuel-hawley-hannah-tanti/
Single Sentence Summary: Samuel Hawley’s teenage daughter, Loo, is just beginning to put together the pieces about her father’s dark history – his very dark history.
Primary Characters: Samuel Hawley – Samuel has been a lot of things in his life: a desperate teenager, a common thief, a killer, a loving husband, a father, a protector. Loo Hawley – A brilliant girl, teenage Loo finds herself settled for the first time and it’s in the town where her mother grew up. Questions inevitably follow.
Synopsis: For as long as she can remember Loo and her father have led a life on the move. Their homes? Motels. Their stays? Weeks to months. Her schooling? Sporadic. Their traveling companions? Guns, rifles, a licorice jar stuffed with money, and a bear skin rug. As Loo reaches her teens, Samuel wants to give her a more normal life, so settles them both in Olympus, Massachusetts where Loo’s mother grew up. Such a huge life change brings with it questions: questions about her mother, questions about their life on the run, and most of all questions about Samuel, for he is the biggest unknown in Loo’s life.
Review: The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, Hannah Tinti’s new book, is definitely one of my favorites this year. She did a masterful job of combining a coming-of-age story with a dark mystery. The chapters alternated between Samuel’s past and the life Loo and Samuel shared in Olympus. Samuel’s life unfolded through the bullet wounds on his body. Each scar revealed a little more about the man that he was and the life of crime he’d chosen for himself. The other chapters focused more on Loo and her reactions to being the new girl in her mother’s hometown. But, the more Loo learned the more questions she had about Samuel and his dark past.
It’s easy to love a book when you love the characters and I was crazy about both Samuel and Loo in The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley. Taking an objective look at Samuel Hawley, there really is far more to dislike than to like. He was a criminal and a killer. The choices he’d made spilled over into the lives of the people he loved most, his wife, Lily, and his daughter, Louise. Somehow, Tanti managed to give this man redeeming qualities so that I couldn’t help but care about Samuel. He was a man in pain who, above all else, loved and wanted to protect his daughter.
“Hawley told her it was her mother’s hometown…..A normal life, Hawley said. With a real house and a neighborhood and friends her own age and a school where she could find a place to belong.”
Loo captivated me even more than Samuel. This was a girl who’d led a life on the run, and the transition to “normal” was not an easy one for Loo. She was different than most kids and making friends was not a skill she’d ever learned. Loo had holes in her life, the biggest being her mother. She’d only known Lily through Samuel and the small shrine he built to her in the bathroom everywhere they had lived. As a teen walking the same streets her mother had, Loo’s appetite for details about Lily could not be quenched, and Samuel couldn’t give her more. When she looked to others for answers, Loo began to see her father with fresh eyes. What she saw slowly eroded their bond.
“Loo watched him shoulder the rifle and understood, in a flickering moment, that her father was exactly that – a professional. All the guns in their house. All the scars on his body. All the ways that he was careful. It was because of this.”
Hannah Tanti’s writing was truly magnificent. She didn’t judge her characters, but treated them with empathy. She gave reasons for Sam’s actions without excusing them. In Loo she created a character that elicited both sympathy and hope. I’m predicting that The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley will be high on my list of top books for 2017! Grade: A
Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: The Dial Press
Release Date: March 28, 2017
Length: 400 pages
Originally at: http://www.novelvisits.com/twelve-lives-samuel-hawley-hannah-tanti/
Single Sentence Summary: Samuel Hawley’s teenage daughter, Loo, is just beginning to put together the pieces about her father’s dark history – his very dark history.
Primary Characters: Samuel Hawley – Samuel has been a lot of things in his life: a desperate teenager, a common thief, a killer, a loving husband, a father, a protector. Loo Hawley – A brilliant girl, teenage Loo finds herself settled for the first time and it’s in the town where her mother grew up. Questions inevitably follow.
Synopsis: For as long as she can remember Loo and her father have led a life on the move. Their homes? Motels. Their stays? Weeks to months. Her schooling? Sporadic. Their traveling companions? Guns, rifles, a licorice jar stuffed with money, and a bear skin rug. As Loo reaches her teens, Samuel wants to give her a more normal life, so settles them both in Olympus, Massachusetts where Loo’s mother grew up. Such a huge life change brings with it questions: questions about her mother, questions about their life on the run, and most of all questions about Samuel, for he is the biggest unknown in Loo’s life.
Review: The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, Hannah Tinti’s new book, is definitely one of my favorites this year. She did a masterful job of combining a coming-of-age story with a dark mystery. The chapters alternated between Samuel’s past and the life Loo and Samuel shared in Olympus. Samuel’s life unfolded through the bullet wounds on his body. Each scar revealed a little more about the man that he was and the life of crime he’d chosen for himself. The other chapters focused more on Loo and her reactions to being the new girl in her mother’s hometown. But, the more Loo learned the more questions she had about Samuel and his dark past.
It’s easy to love a book when you love the characters and I was crazy about both Samuel and Loo in The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley. Taking an objective look at Samuel Hawley, there really is far more to dislike than to like. He was a criminal and a killer. The choices he’d made spilled over into the lives of the people he loved most, his wife, Lily, and his daughter, Louise. Somehow, Tanti managed to give this man redeeming qualities so that I couldn’t help but care about Samuel. He was a man in pain who, above all else, loved and wanted to protect his daughter.
“Hawley told her it was her mother’s hometown…..A normal life, Hawley said. With a real house and a neighborhood and friends her own age and a school where she could find a place to belong.”
Loo captivated me even more than Samuel. This was a girl who’d led a life on the run, and the transition to “normal” was not an easy one for Loo. She was different than most kids and making friends was not a skill she’d ever learned. Loo had holes in her life, the biggest being her mother. She’d only known Lily through Samuel and the small shrine he built to her in the bathroom everywhere they had lived. As a teen walking the same streets her mother had, Loo’s appetite for details about Lily could not be quenched, and Samuel couldn’t give her more. When she looked to others for answers, Loo began to see her father with fresh eyes. What she saw slowly eroded their bond.
“Loo watched him shoulder the rifle and understood, in a flickering moment, that her father was exactly that – a professional. All the guns in their house. All the scars on his body. All the ways that he was careful. It was because of this.”
Hannah Tanti’s writing was truly magnificent. She didn’t judge her characters, but treated them with empathy. She gave reasons for Sam’s actions without excusing them. In Loo she created a character that elicited both sympathy and hope. I’m predicting that The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley will be high on my list of top books for 2017! Grade: A
Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.
bobbiecabrera's review against another edition
3.0
This review is also found on my blog: A Poised Quill! :)
--
Actual Rating: 3.5 stars
--
Tinti writes beautiful prose, but to be completely honest, I struggled with this book. I could not relate to neither Loo nor Hawley. They've been through a lot, particularly Hawley, which makes him so compelling and difficult at the same time. He makes for one of the most interesting characters I've read recently, but he's so complex and doesn't make for an easy read.To be frank, I am not really comfortable with guns--they've always held a sense of danger and violence for me. And this book did not help repress that fear. Because of the characters' and plot's heavy dependence on guns, I'm wary for the entire time I was reading the book.
Halfway through the book, I felt duped. I was expecting this book to be...magical, or at least I would find constant reference to classical myths as one of the blurb said, but I found none of that. So yeah, I guess, it was unmet expectations. I was irritated at how at one point, the story was veering towards the YA genre. If you haven't noticed, I no longer hold contemporary YAs to the highest regard. They don't hold much "believability" and being identifiable for me anymore. (I don't know if it's just because I've grown out of it, or there just aren't any exceptional YAs lately.) So this book shifting towards YA at one point was sigh-inducing.
A redeeming feature for me (by that I meant, the reason why I didn't give this an even lower rating) was towards the end of the book; Bullet Number Eleven was the most beautiful chapter of this book. In hindsight, it may look sloppy, but the build-up towards it was paced well, and it became the quintessential manifestation of Loo and Hawley's relationship.
--
Disclaimer: Excerpts below are from the book. Copyright © 2017 by Hannah Tinti:
--
Actual Rating: 3.5 stars
--
Tinti writes beautiful prose, but to be completely honest, I struggled with this book. I could not relate to neither Loo nor Hawley. They've been through a lot, particularly Hawley, which makes him so compelling and difficult at the same time. He makes for one of the most interesting characters I've read recently, but he's so complex and doesn't make for an easy read.To be frank, I am not really comfortable with guns--they've always held a sense of danger and violence for me. And this book did not help repress that fear. Because of the characters' and plot's heavy dependence on guns, I'm wary for the entire time I was reading the book.
Halfway through the book, I felt duped. I was expecting this book to be...magical, or at least I would find constant reference to classical myths as one of the blurb said, but I found none of that. So yeah, I guess, it was unmet expectations. I was irritated at how at one point, the story was veering towards the YA genre. If you haven't noticed, I no longer hold contemporary YAs to the highest regard. They don't hold much "believability" and being identifiable for me anymore. (I don't know if it's just because I've grown out of it, or there just aren't any exceptional YAs lately.) So this book shifting towards YA at one point was sigh-inducing.
A redeeming feature for me (by that I meant, the reason why I didn't give this an even lower rating) was towards the end of the book; Bullet Number Eleven was the most beautiful chapter of this book. In hindsight, it may look sloppy, but the build-up towards it was paced well, and it became the quintessential manifestation of Loo and Hawley's relationship.
--
Disclaimer: Excerpts below are from the book. Copyright © 2017 by Hannah Tinti:
It was easier to fall back on what he knew than try to change, even though he understood things weren't right anymore.
Changing where you were could change how much you mattered.
ocurtsinger's review
5.0
Samuel Hawley is a tough hired hand with twelve scars from twelve bullets he's caught throughout his life, and Hannah Tinti has written twelve thrilling and captivating chapters to tell the tale behind each scar. But she's also interwoven those chapters with the present-day story of Samuel's teenage daughter, Loo, and the tender but fraught relationship they have. Hannah Tinti is not only a master of suspense, but also setting the scene with characters that are actually sympathetic and worth rooting for. I can't remember the last time I zipped through almost four hundred pages so quickly.
geisttull's review
3.0
A good story. Found it a little slow to start, but it did pick up and I did not the end.
underthejunipertree's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I picked this up on the whim as soon I saw that Ruth Ozeki recommended it.
The tale is about Samuel Hawley, a rugged father, and his daughter, Loo (Louise), who live a nomadic motel-to-motel life because of Hawley's criminal past. The story is divided two ways: the present from the perspective of Loo who has little idea of her father's life before her, and the past from Hawley's, detailing the story behind each bullet scar he carries. Eventually, the past catches up to the present, a structural set-up that parallels the plot's progression and thriller-like conclusion.
As such, the plot progresses mainly in service of Hawley's past. Little by little, Loo discovers the reasons why they're on the run, the true story behind her mother's death, and why Hawley carries all of those guns. On the other hand, I hesitate to say that there was significant present character development. Loo's anger issues never get substantially addressed, Hawley does as he's always done to take care of shady business, and Loo's grandmother never gets the closure the poor woman deserves. The narrative is decidedly sympathetic towards Hawley, whose gruff, handsome archetype seems designed for compassion despite being clearly troubled, but I think the story could have benefited from a deeper engagement in the reflections of the characters who suffered from his destructive choices. Loo loves her father so, but the blind spots seem to remain to the very end.
The tale is about Samuel Hawley, a rugged father, and his daughter, Loo (Louise), who live a nomadic motel-to-motel life because of Hawley's criminal past. The story is divided two ways: the present from the perspective of Loo who has little idea of her father's life before her, and the past from Hawley's, detailing the story behind each bullet scar he carries. Eventually, the past catches up to the present, a structural set-up that parallels the plot's progression and thriller-like conclusion.
As such, the plot progresses mainly in service of Hawley's past. Little by little, Loo discovers the reasons why they're on the run, the true story behind her mother's death, and why Hawley carries all of those guns. On the other hand, I hesitate to say that there was significant present character development. Loo's anger issues never get substantially addressed, Hawley does as he's always done to take care of shady business, and Loo's grandmother never gets the closure the poor woman deserves. The narrative is decidedly sympathetic towards Hawley, whose gruff, handsome archetype seems designed for compassion despite being clearly troubled, but I think the story could have benefited from a deeper engagement in the reflections of the characters who suffered from his destructive choices. Loo loves her father so, but the blind spots seem to remain to the very end.
shirlee2024's review
4.0
Very different from anything else I've read. I almost gave it 3 starts because it's pretty dark, but it's very well done.
thecamilleae's review
3.0
It took me two years to finish this book. It started off very engaging. I wanted to learn more about the main characters and where the story was going. I put the book down 75% of the way in, because it seemed predictable. I'm glad I picked it up again, because the ending was not what I expected. However, I was still underwhelmed.
terranovanz's review against another edition
3.0
I wanted to like this book, but I found it ponderous and patchy. I liked Samuel's story much more than Loo's.