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takecoverbooksptbo's review
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Forced institutionalization, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Infidelity, Homophobia, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship
Minor: Medical trauma, Abandonment, and Mental illness
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.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Hate crime, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Death, Homophobia, Medical content, and Racism
Minor: Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Ableism, Domestic abuse, Rape, Sexual content, Suicide attempt, Xenophobia, and Suicidal thoughts
finnc's review
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Black Outs is incredibly creative, subversive, relevant, and in a league of its own.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content and Homophobia
bella_ruth's review
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
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Sexual content, Homophobia, Death, Terminal illness, Lesbophobia, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
jessthanthree's review
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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Grief, Sexual content, Mental illness, and Death
Moderate: Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Terminal illness, Dementia, Homophobia, Medical content, Adult/minor relationship, Medical trauma, Racism, and Suicide attempt
Minor: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Alcohol, Violence, Abandonment, Transphobia, Panic attacks/disorders, War, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
drowsyowl's review
It just didn't seem like it was ever going to have a real plot. I imagine it was only going to end up being a fake biography of a homosexual man which gives historical context of the gay experience. I'm sure the remainder of the narrative is interesting and heartbreaking and eye opening - I found the first 1/5 to be so. But it's not really what I consider a fictional plot, nor did the storytelling compel me to want more. It was is a numb sort of telling, one that made me as the reader also numb to it. Even to the things that were meant to elicit shock.
It's just not for me 😞
It's just not for me 😞
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia
Moderate: Sexual content, Terminal illness, Domestic abuse, Pregnancy, Addiction, Mental illness, Physical abuse, and Forced institutionalization
readerette's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
It might be better read as a physical copy rather than digital, and certainly not as an audiobook if one is available--there are too many images that go with the text.
I found the literary structures overwrought and distracting. I appreciated the facts about the life experiences of the main characters as gay men in a time when homosexuality was still taboo, but watching everything through a scattered fever dream was not compelling to me.
I found the literary structures overwrought and distracting. I appreciated the facts about the life experiences of the main characters as gay men in a time when homosexuality was still taboo, but watching everything through a scattered fever dream was not compelling to me.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Sexual content, Homophobia, and Sexual violence
badmom's review
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The structure of this novel can be confusing as it often moves between past & present, through different voices & states of consciousness, referencing literary quotes & research data & history & art. However, it is a fascinating look at memory + perspection as well as a glimpse at how society at large perceives homosexuality. The voices are poetic and rich and endearing; the imagery is entrancing.
I’m left wanting to reread it, and also read more.
I’m left wanting to reread it, and also read more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content and Death
Moderate: Homophobia, Abandonment, Colonisation, Lesbophobia, and Confinement
Minor: Medical content, Medical trauma, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Mental illness, Rape, Adult/minor relationship, and Infidelity
just_one_more_paige's review
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Well, I wasn't really planning to read this. But I flipped through it after it won this year's National Book Award for Fiction. And I was interested in the formatting - the sepia toned pages, the blackout poetry, the (seemingly) random, and quite explicit in some cases, images/photos. So, I decided to give it a go.
Somewhere, in what feels like the middle of nowhere in the desert (maybe in a place that's not even real?), a young man spends time with a dying elder, someone whose path he crossed years ago, tangentially. But now, the two spend their full days together, trading stories of their pasts, their families, their loves lives. And as part of this sharing, Juan Gay passes on his lifelong project to our younger narrator. This project is based on the (real) Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, a collection of "case studies" of queer people from the early twentieth century (collected, as a lesser known fact of the book, not by the name on the publication who co-opted the work, but rather by a queer female researcher, Jan Gay). And as the story of those stories mixes with those of Juan and our narrators, we see how the past is, always, all around us, informing our present and influencing our future, even as we lose and mourn parts that have been erased.
Look, my overarching feeling after finishing this novel is that I don't think I am smart enough to understand it. I mean, the writing was lovely, that poetry-prose style that is lyrical and intelligent and rhythmic AF. Torres also does some very cool things with his writing, like taking popularly understood grotesque/repulsive concepts (like end of life care and frail elderly bodies and institutionalization, etc.) and providing them beauty and grace through his language. It's also purposefully provocative, with some of the extra artistic pieces, like the images chosen and in the way the blackouts take out the context and leave just the raw sexual urges/acts (offering a powerful counter narrative to the original writing). And overall, the relationship between Juan and our narrator, the storytelling, and the memoria collected are building to an excavation that you know is coming, a coming together that you really wonder what will be revealed. But the snippets and vignettes jump all over, and I can vaguely see the connections, they also consistently felt just out of reach and honestly I couldn't always tell who was talking or what all they were referring to.
Another aspect that had me all mixed up was what was real and what wasn't. Like, so many of the references, the people (historical figures), the (queer) history are real. I Googled (and learned) *so* much. And there was, naturally and necessarily, an addressing of the patriarchy and colonial influence on mental illness, and what qualifies historically and today (queerness, cultural differences unique to Brown people, etc.). The way these populations were “criminalized, stigmatized, pathologized,” based on a matter of perspective and what popularly counts as respectable; none of this is new thought, but the presentation of it is gorgeously written. And it was all a gorgeous honoring of and reminder to learn from our elders. But then I couldn't tell where Juan fell on that: was he real, fictional, a figment of the narrator's imagination or a part of his own self? Not until the "post-face" was that sort of cleared up (ish), so I felt unmoored throughout a lot of the reading.
The way the title, Blackouts, is given multiple meanings - blackouts, as art form, as self preservation, as mental illness, as forgetting with age and time - is so intelligent, is so profound. Though it's balanced out a bit because I couldn't help but compare this in my head as "sad boy" literature, to complement sad girl shit like that of Otessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation) and Melissa Broder (The Pisces), though of course much "higher brow." And there's the thing: past all my thoughts and reactions, I honestly don’t know what I think, because at the end of the day, I don’t know how much I really, truly understood any of it.
“…a work of intense observation transformed into a work of erasure.”
“I don't know what the word is...crestfallen, I suppose. / A fine word. / Where does it come from? I'm sure you know. / Well, cocks have crests, and other birds, and horses. / And mountains. / And mountains. And waves. And the houses of great families. / And they all fall down.? / That's right. The mountains crumble, and the waves crash, and they all fall down - the chickens and the families and the faces of landladies.” (this kind of verbal play, word dissection, dialogue, creative thought is always so impressive to me)
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. The way to dusty death.”
“The release of the want of the want of release.” (on electroshock therapy removing libido, and oh the layered meanings of this!, the wordplay!)
“Darling, the only thing anyone should be embarrassed about is taking themselves too seriously.”
“Yet the habits of poverty run deep - and I felt, underneath the surface, the same old dread. A constant sense that I'd forgotten to attend a vague but terrible urgency.”
“It’s true, all erotic experience can be reduced to crudeness, nene. But does that mean it ought to be?”
“How can you make a syndrome of a people?”
“Remember this: not all ambiguities need to be resolved, nene.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Homophobia, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Confinement, Suicide attempt, Sexual content, and Mental illness
caseythereader's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Confinement, Cursing, Medical content, Mental illness, Suicide attempt, Death, Forced institutionalization, Sexual content, and Infidelity
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