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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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Hate crime, Mental illness, Child abuse, Outing, Classism, Death, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Transphobia, Ableism, Chronic illness, Dementia, Sexism, Suicide attempt, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Confinement, Terminal illness, Abandonment, Police brutality, Domestic abuse, Self harm, and Homophobia
mmccombs's review
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
This was like reading a dream, experimental and surreal and blurry. I leave this feeling like I didn’t quite get it but I do appreciate what it was doing. Blending different types of art and fiction/nonfiction, it’s a book that explores gaps in memory and in history. I’m glad I read this but also know it might take a while to really wrap my mind around it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Suicide, Death, Racism, and Mental illness
badmom's review against another edition
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 against another edition
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
inkylabyrinth's review against another edition
Just not for me, I think. I was lost.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content
Moderate: Confinement
caseythereader's review
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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