MashReads Podcast: 'The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley' tells the story of a man's life through his scars

Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, has a theory: "Our scars are really our way of telling the stories of our lives," she says.

It's this observation that helped inspire her latest novel and provides its powerful approach to storytelling.

"[While writing] I thought: Wouldn't it be interesting to try to tell a man's entire life story where you only get the story of his scars and you skip everything in between?" Tinti asks.

Twelve Lives does just that.

The novel is a father/daughter story about what it means to be a hero, and the price we pay to protect the people we love the most. The book provides two stories, told in parallel: The history of Samuel Hawley and his "twelve lives" (which are the twelve bullet wounds he's received while working as a criminal smuggler), side-by-side with the coming-of-age story of Loo, Hawley's daughter. As the storylines converge, Twelve Lives demonstrates how wounds we thought were a part of the past often have the power to haunt us in the future.

This week on the MashReads Podcast, we read and discuss Hannah Tinti's novel The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley with author Hannah Tinti herself. Join us as we talk about father/daughter stories, the significance of scars, and being an outsider.

If you want to see footage of the greasy pole, a real-life tradition Hannah writes about in The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, check out her tweets here and here and here.

As always, we close the show with recommendations:

• Hannah has been reading a lot of comics and recommends Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, East of West by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta, Sweet Tooth by Jeff Lemire, and Mind Mgmt by Matt Kindt.

• Aliza recommends GLOW, Netflix's new series about the world of women wrestlers in the '80s. "Speaking of complex femininity, y'all need to watch the new Netflix series Glow. It is amazing!"

• MJ recommends Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, a postmodern novel about grief by Max Porter. "What I love about this book is that it captures how mundane grief can be ... it's a moving, really weird, and really beautiful novel." MJ also recommends "Laverne Cox boldly addresses the one issue the LGBTQ community doesn't want to talk about," an interview with Cox by Mashable's social good writer Katie Dupere about inclusion in Pride and the LGBTQ+ community.

• Peter recommends the McSweeney's list "11 Ways That I, a White Man, Am Not Privileged" — "It's just a quick read, and it takes a turn, as it does, and it's pretty funny. I don't want to say more."

Next week we'll be reading and discussing The Idiot by Elif Batuman. We hope you'll join us. And if you're looking for another book to sink your teeth into, we suggest Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, our new MashReads book club pick for the month. Gyasi will be talking to MashReads IRL on Tuesday, July 25 at 6:30 p.m. EDT at Mashable HQ in New York City. RSVP here and join us!

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