SOURCE: "The Underview," in The New York Times Book Review, May 14, 1989, p. 19.

In the following review, Kennedy remarks favorably on Boomerang.

Though middle age has chastened Barry Hannah a bit, the Mississippi macho-romantic is still a tremendous lover of the lustiness of life in his brief, minor but brilliant autobiographical novel. He has drawn on his own experience with insistent honesty in Geronimo Rex, Airships and six other novels and story collections, so there is little of a personal nature in Boomerang to surprise, except possibly his obsession with his childhood smallness and a certain wistfulness when he mentions other writers' compliments on his work.

"A lot of people sit back in life and have their overview," he writes. "Compared to my underview, where I scout, under the bleachers, for what life has dropped." Random vivid episodes are held together by three boomerang-throwing sessions, which give a remarkably...