Barry Hannah's Ray … is a song. Sharp and snappy snatches for the most part, above the electrics, cool and hot, of being alive….

It's announced to be a novel, and there is a thread of a story to cling to as necessary, though the southern milieu—slice-of-Americana-now—is just as handy. Mostly it's the recollections and musings—sorrows and ecstacies, dreams and encounters—of a bright, horny, 33-year-old Alabama doctor whose first two names are Ray and Forrest (we never learn the last) and who sings and hums (occasionally yells) us through the book in both the first and third persons…. There are the glums of course—irritations that boil over at the tragedies of life and at a humdrumness that robs tragedy of honor (Ray is quite often a gallant knight trapped in a Jiffy Mart), and wincing periods of "no nookie"—but make no mistake, Ray...