A review by jayisreading
Blackouts by Justin Torres

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.
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