[Barry Hannah's] first novel, "Geronimo Rex," was published last year to general, if tempered, praise; it is a crazy and messy piece of work which unravels in the end, but it has admirable energy, exuberant humor and a genuine feel for what it is like to grow up in the contemporary South. But "Nightwatchmen" is another matter altogether; it is simply a mess.

What we have here is dimestore philosophizing, uncertain satire and rambling story-telling. "Nightwatchmen" attempts to be a consideration of love and death and points in between, but it sustains so little narrative interest that its unastonishing conclusions are scarcely worth the labor of reaching them. The novel does not seriously shake my conviction that Hannah is a talented and promising novelist, but any admirer of "Geronimo Rex" is likely to wish that the author had kept "Nightwatchmen" to himself….

Before "Nightwatchmen" reaches its conclusion, Hannah...