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martinatan 's review for:
Blackouts
by Justin Torres
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
For the middle portion of this book, due to the slow pace at which I could get through it, this was dipping dangerously close to a “did not finish”. I think the vignette style of the novel contributed to this, as I like to feel like I am getting through a lot of plot at once through more continuous chapters rather than piecemeal moments. I have been eyeing this book and flipping through its pages in bookstores for a year or so, however, so I didn’t want it to end up a disappointment.
However, I spent this morning reading the last 100 pages and the book skyrocketed in my consciousness to become something undeniably genius, mind blowing, tender, and laboriously crafted. It helped that I realized the layered footnoting at the back of the book around this time. I had a lot of fun poring over the images I had read past to see how exactly they were fabricated into this weird, pseudo-historical story about story. For the first half, it hadn’t occurred to me that this novel might be borrowing real names and biographies from our world, and I think the packaging of this book intentionally lends to that first impression. It made the discovery of how this book related to the author’s own life and relationship with his Juan a very dear experience to me.
Although the writing is often esoteric and complex due to the historical quotes and figures and the nature of the characters’ memory, sharing anecdotes with knowingness but also curiosity, I can’t fault Torres for accomplishing what I feel he set out to do, process his own memory with his Juan, as he reveals in his “sort of Postface”. I don’t always like how that kind of intellectual writing leaves me in the dark. But in this case, the discontinuity and reluctance to elaborate speak directly to the difficulty of recovery from erasure, how our memory fails us and yet we create stories from what moments we recall and what our subconscious dictates. I love an author who is informed about medium and the complex questions of memory and archive; Torres wields these concepts with absolute mastery.
Ultimately this was such a cool work of art that I am grateful to have experienced, and will be thinking about for a long time. Wow!
However, I spent this morning reading the last 100 pages and the book skyrocketed in my consciousness to become something undeniably genius, mind blowing, tender, and laboriously crafted. It helped that I realized the layered footnoting at the back of the book around this time. I had a lot of fun poring over the images I had read past to see how exactly they were fabricated into this weird, pseudo-historical story about story. For the first half, it hadn’t occurred to me that this novel might be borrowing real names and biographies from our world, and I think the packaging of this book intentionally lends to that first impression. It made the discovery of how this book related to the author’s own life and relationship with his Juan a very dear experience to me.
Although the writing is often esoteric and complex due to the historical quotes and figures and the nature of the characters’ memory, sharing anecdotes with knowingness but also curiosity, I can’t fault Torres for accomplishing what I feel he set out to do, process his own memory with his Juan, as he reveals in his “sort of Postface”. I don’t always like how that kind of intellectual writing leaves me in the dark. But in this case, the discontinuity and reluctance to elaborate speak directly to the difficulty of recovery from erasure, how our memory fails us and yet we create stories from what moments we recall and what our subconscious dictates. I love an author who is informed about medium and the complex questions of memory and archive; Torres wields these concepts with absolute mastery.
Ultimately this was such a cool work of art that I am grateful to have experienced, and will be thinking about for a long time. Wow!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Dementia
Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Death, Homophobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, Sexual content, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Lesbophobia, Abandonment, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Confinement, Cursing, Drug use, Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Forced institutionalization, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol