SOURCE: "Boy's Life," in The Village Voice, Vol. 34, No. 31, August 1, 1989, pp. 58-9.

In the following review, Kennedy praises Hannah's style in Boomerang but finds it difficult to empathize with the author's persona.

We must forgive Barry Hannah his inability to mention a woman without leering; we must forgive him his swaggering and name-dropping; we must forgive him because of his sentences.

In his latest, Boomerang, Hannah writes as sublimely and tersely as ever. He distills into hard little aphorisms the profound sound and fury of Southern oratory, the sensuous sermonizing of an entire people who've had a few slugs of whiskey and now want to hear their own voices saying scandalous truths about dying and fornicating and The War of Northern Aggression.

Who would think a Southerner could be so short-winded? "Pappy is like the Confederate Army. So awesome in his rudeness." "I was embarrassed by her, but...