Description: Love and torment, lunacy and desire, tenderness and war -- the stories in "Bats Out of Hell "provide a brilliant, dazzling odyssey into American life. Barry Hannah's reputation as a master of the short story, first established in 1978 with the publication of Airships, is magnified in this volatile, long-awaited collection of new stories. Astonishing in range and in the portrayal of the human heart, these fierce and radar-perfect stories give us individuals with whom hilarity and pain combine with true and startling clarity.
Review Quotes:
"There is perverse (and delightful) genius afoot here, more so than in any of his work since the 1978 Airships. Hannah invades the lives of a vast array of Americans, taking few prisoners. . . . Hannah's sentences are so frequently touched by grace, his ability to grip so akin to witchcraft, and his humor so fierce, you read on. Tom Waits couldn't sing it any better." -Randall Kenan, Boston Sunday Globe
"Bats Out of Hell leaves little doubt that Hannah remains one of the most fascinating and important writers working in this country today." -The Times-Picayune
"In Bats Out of Hell Hannah has created astonishing characters out of insight and irony. But even those who smell of magnolia-scented decay strut and rant in a world that is recognizable as the last, mad years of the millennium." -William Rodarmor, San Francisco Chronicle
"The best of these twenty-three stories are as good as they come. Risky, inventive, comic, with gothic overtones, they have the Faulknerian weight of some of Mr. Hannah's novels." -Shelby Hearon, The New York Times Book Review