Boomerang

From the award-winning author of Geronimo Rex, autobiographical short stories explore the coming of age of a young man in the American South. 

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and twice nominated for the National Book Award, Barry Hannah blends autobiography and fiction in a series of vignettes exploring love, violence, and memory. Following the narrator's life from his childhood memories of growing up in the South among such cherished traditions as shooting air rifles and high school football to an adulthood filled with alcohol abuse, marital discord, and a great uncle's poignant attempt to come to terms with his son's incomprehensible murder, Hannah reveals in vivid, inventive prose the boomerang effect of memory as the past returns with unforeseen force again and again. With cameos from "characters" such as Jack Nicholson and Michael Douglas, and a bevy of literary figures such as Gordan Lish and Sam Lawrence, Boomerang is a witty, moving, startingly original fiction from one of the twentieth century's great American writers.

"Hannah snorted the chalky line between seriousness and playfulness." —The New York Times