Barry Hannah

Nominated for the American Book Award, Ray is the bizarre, hilarious, and consistently adventurous story of a life on the edge. Dr. Ray--a womanizer, small-town drunk, vigilante, poet, adoring husband--is a man trying to make sense of life in the twentieth century. In flight from the death he dealt flying over Vietnam, Dr. Ray struggles with those bound to him by need, sickness, lunacy, by blood and by love.

A small-town southern physician, in his mid-thirties--who is also an adoring husband, a philanderer, a devoted but unnoticing father, a frustrated poet, and a frustrated killer--finds some fulfillment in caring for losers and lunatics.

Melody Izard

Barry Hannah's nephew told my husband that he had tried briefly living with Uncle Barry. He said he never used a cliché, always had something interesting to say, but his rants started to scare him. That's just how I felt about the book. My, my, he can turn a phrase - but what the hell is he talking about?
Barry Hannah was the uncle of my husband's college roommate. That fact, the poetic phrases, and the familiar landmarks mentioned in the "story" (the term I shall use lightly) made the book a likeable one. But I can't go further than that. I just found myself feeling like the book was written during a fog of alcohol poison and I wanted to give the women the number of a domestic abuse counselor.

Ray

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