In its peculiar way—and its way is endlessly peculiar—Ray is a novel of the South….

[Barry Hannah's world] has the lyricism and silliness-with-a-straight-face of a Steinberg cartoon. Despite the background of violence and disorder—the sirens and the asylum are near—its immediate subject is quaintly untroubled, just as Steinberg's multicolored, melodramatic smears of mauve and blue and red coexist with simpler line-drawing….

The book is crowded—slim as it is—with … random evils. You have only to watch your local news broadcast, read small-town papers or the New York Daily News to know how commonplace they are—and the knowledge is important for appreciating that Hannah is not making a metaphor out of the purposeless violence in American life. Ray merely happens to work in a hospital, where he has to repair its victims. (p. 25)

The postmoral protest against absurdity and violence, the exuberant sex...