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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.
Graphic: Death, Terminal illness, Dementia, Drug use, Infidelity, Biphobia, Child abuse, Classism, Forced institutionalization, Lesbophobia, Suicide attempt, Mental illness, Racism, Addiction, Homophobia, Medical content, Death of parent, Grief, and Adult/minor relationship
jayisreading's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
Blackouts was a quiet and introspective book, as well as a complex one. I'm not quite sure how to describe this novel, other than that it's very experimental and gets increasingly ethereal in the way Torres traces queer history and searches for queer hope. Most interesting about this novel was incorporation of a real-life text, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, to help guide the story and its themes along.
It was fascinating to see how the story unfolded primarily through tender, intimate conversations between two queer men: an unnamed narrator who is in his twenties, and a dying, elderly man named Juan. Torres is also tracing queer history through these conversations mixed with multimedia. It's also clear that queer history is more than "just" queerness, as Torres relates it to race, masculinity, and more.
I have no doubt that a number of things flew over my head as I was reading this, and Blackouts certainly is a book that asks to be reread for further contemplation. This is a book that asks the reader to take their time with every image/illustration, every line, and every utterance.
Graphic: Medical content and Homophobia
Minor: Death and Drug use
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