Reviews tagging 'Terminal illness'

Blackouts: A Novel by Justin Torres

12 reviews

katclaybaugh's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

For me, this is a new instant classic in queer lit centered on queer memory and the importance of learning and telling our stories within our community from our own perspectives. 

I don’t usually enjoy a loose or ambiguous narrative structure. However, Torres rode the line perfectly shifting between impactful vignettes, images, blackout poetry, and illustrative passages… I was fully engaged and the ambiguity serves the narrative purposefully without ever wandering into nonsensical pretension. 

This novel is a treasure trove of queer references and history embellished within a fictional narrative to entertain. 

As someone who lost a queer elder to the AIDS epidemic… this novel felt like an inheritance I was never lucky enough to attain. It was both tragic and beautiful,  deeply earnest yet wholly wry.

I took this first read to enjoy the narrative arc, but I can’t wait to reread this and unlock all of the references and hidden gems I might’ve missed. I’m so grateful for and genuinely in awe of the feat of this work by Justin Torres. This will stick with me for years to come. 5/5 stars well earned.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Grief, and Acephobia/Arophobia

Moderate: Hate crime, Sexism, Violence, and Forced institutionalization

Minor: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, and Alcohol

unboxedjack's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Death of parent

deadevergreen's review against another edition

challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I can definitely see why this book won a literary award. So much of this story left me with more questions than answers--Torres creates a rich tapestry for points of discussion in a book club or academic setting. It's not the most compelling story I've read this year, and was at may points hard to follow. However, it definitely taught me some things about queer history and gave my mind a workout. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness

ka_cam's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A meditative, reflective, moody and sometimes playful genre-blending history/memoir/hagiography/scrapbook/and more following a young gay man as he accompanies an elder gay man is dying. From different generations both share Puerto Rican heritage and a brief overlapping stay at a psych facility. Weaves oral, written, visual archives with an interpersonal relationship and personal reflections in a way I found compelling and thought provoking, also learned some queer history. Loved the ruminations on the very porous boundaries between ‘reality’ and memory, archives, history, psychology, and storytelling. The power of being recorded and excercising power over what is recorded and what is erased- challenging binaries of known/unknown and truth/fiction. Encourages the reader to recognize and appreciate the past, the ways it is present, our received and constructed narratives or lenses, and the ways we can leave space for what we we never truly know about the past and those who live/d in it. Some of the thoughts can come off a bit trite, and I can see how it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Chronic illness, Death, Mental illness, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Xenophobia, Suicide attempt, and Abandonment

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Toxic relationship

waytoomanybooks's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a beautifully written and sensitively told story about grief, loss, and love in the respective queer communities of the two main characters (approximately from the 1930s to the 1990s). The novel is an interesting blend of fact and fiction, and is told through blackout/erasure poetry, as well as narratives from the two leads. I found the erasure poetry and the inserted images to add positively to my reading experience.

The main characters also experience literal memory blackouts that influence the narrative, which makes it a bit tricky to follow at some points, but if you take the time to math it out, you can make a decent timeline of important dates and the characters’ ages. Sometimes it is tricky to tell what is a memory and what is a dream/hope/wish/fear/desire, which is an intentional stylistic choice, but one that I don’t personally like.

One aspect I don’t like about any book—not just this one—is when a book just ends without closure or a hint at closure. I can’t stand it when the narrative does a hard cut into acknowledgments.

Though just because this book isn’t stylistically my jam, I would still recommend reading it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Terminal illness, Transphobia, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Dementia, Grief, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Outing, Abandonment, and Classism

takecoverbooks's review against another edition

challenging mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

A mixture of Calvino's polyphonous Invisible Cities, Mendelsohn's myserious memoir of queer New York The Elusive Embrace, and the touching diasporic dissonance Noor Naga's autofiction If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, Justin Torres' Blackouts is a multifaceted love story.

There are so many different types of love explored in the novel: friendship, romance, familial love, carnality, love of art, romanticization of the past, care work, among many others. While it's not a clear-eyed novel whose beginning-middle-end structure is immediately satisfying, the miasmal atmosphere and haunting presences of the book resonate far beyond its conclusion.

In a way, Torres gives us a ghost story, but, in another way, Blackouts could be considered a truthful synopsis of our mediated existence. A novel of ideas, it asks, what is biographical or personal truth when it can only ever be revealed through the cleaning-up process of storytelling? Is the past meaningless in the face of an inexhaustible present? Or, alternatively, is the past the only thing that can bestow meaning, given that our personhood can only be defined by the collage of memory and documentation that exists to tell us who we are? Torres doesn't embark on the journey to answer these questions, but to get the reader to think about them, to meditate upon our fragile bodies in relation to the deep time of our actions.

Blackouts is a remarkable book, but it's certainly not for everyone. At times, its elliptical structure gets in the way of the story being told, and the characters floating through the narrative seem too vaporous to picture without the substantial archival material bound up with the text. Having said that, I think most who pick it up will find something to love.      

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Terminal illness, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Homophobia, Infidelity, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Mental illness, Medical trauma, and Abandonment

sarah984's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This was a really interesting book, a sort of auto-fiction/historical fiction combination about telling stories and being interpreted and pathologized. I liked it a lot.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racism, Terminal illness, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, and Medical content

Minor: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse, Rape, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, Suicide attempt, and Abandonment

bella_ruth's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Homophobia, Racism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Lesbophobia

mirandyli's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

A beautifully written, heart wrenching story about intergenerational queer friendship. Will make you want to hug and kiss the queer elders in your life. This book won a bunch of awards and deserved all of them.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Biphobia, Child abuse, Death, Drug use, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Racism, Terminal illness, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Lesbophobia, and Classism

jessthanthree's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, and Grief

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Homophobia, Infidelity, Racism, Terminal illness, Medical content, Dementia, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, and Lesbophobia

Minor: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Transphobia, Violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Abandonment, Alcohol, and War