I remember hearing a saying all the time that girls were closer to their fathers and boys were closer to their mothers. I’m not sure where the saying came from, but whether it was an old wives tale or it could be attributed to something Freudian, I’ve always been one of those daughters who is closer to their father, a niche which has been stifled in my reading history.

Many of the books I’ve read that feature families in them either have a father who is absent, a father who is placid, or one who is abusive. Thankfully, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti sidesteps any misgivings I may have had previously. While I went into this book gingerly, half expecting a Faulkner-esque father figure who stepped out of the pages of As I Lay Dying, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Hawley and his daughter, Loo, were able to be interesting without being simultaneously unpleasant.

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