Member Reviews

This book delves into the lives of real individuals, weaving their experiences into a fictionalized narrative that appears authentic. The story unfolds as a young gay man embarks on a journey to the Palace to reunite with Juan, an older gay man facing his final days. Their connection dates back to a meeting in a mental health facility a decade earlier. As the young man, referred to as "Nene" by Juan, cares for his ailing friend, they exchange life stories.

Luis, the protagonist, is revealed to possess a book about Sexual Deviants, its pages mostly obscured, with only a few words remaining visible. These surviving words, when read together on a page, create a poetic composition. While the book itself is real, the life imagined by the author for one of its researchers, Jan Gay, is entirely fictional. Thus, the narrative unfolds through three distinct life stories, accompanied by photos of the obscured poems and additional, at times explicit, images that subtly suggest the story's authenticity.

At its core, the book highlights the profound friendship between the two men, portraying their conversations as a form of cultural immersion—an exchange of knowledge and experiences. The narrative can be interpreted as a reinterpretation of queer history, challenging historical perspectives on identity and sexuality while exploring the construction of these concepts. Simultaneously, it delves into themes of love, friendship, aging, and family. The dialogue is both sharp and deeply personal, contributing to the nuanced exploration of the characters' lives.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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An absolutely stunning and beautiful read. So deserving of all of its recent recognition.
I was so moved by these characters - the story was told with such honesty and beauty. Historical details and visual elements added so much to the story.
This is a book that I will cherish for a long time - a stunning read and highlight of the year,

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Blackouts is as ambitious and intelligent as it is raw and dirty. It's a story within a story. At first a mystery within a story then a history within a story. It's about stories and the many different ways people can tell stories (through a scientific study, through blackout poetry, through made up movies, etc.).

I can't really explain the plot of this book, it's one of those literary fictions that's mainly people talking about their lives. But this book is art. It needs to be experienced.

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A book that needs more than one reading. Hard to wrap your head around initially, and even harder to describe. It's bold and audacious, although some of its meta/autobiographical qualities feel a bit deflating towards the end. Still, its best moments are quite powerful, and you can't help admiring Torres for trying something unique and personal.

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As of November 10, 2023, Justin Torres has been shortlisted for the National Book Award for this dizzying, revelatory, hilarious, and touching, collage of homosexual life, history, and bigotry. Torres has fashioned this examination of how our stories are told, and how we're often erased (blacked out) from the public and popular history. He uses Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns as a way to approach the material, and various erasures from the book’s interview subjects are included within the narrative.

Even within the story of Juan and "Nene," we learn so much about gay history and how that gay history has been suppressed. Torres pays particular attention to the work of Jan Gay whose work on Sex Variants was crucial, but Gay's work was used but not attributed to her. In creating a portrait of Gay, Torres connects this to how Nene and Juan create stories about lives. The novel repeatedly asks the question, "How do we maintain our histories in a world that seeks to silence and legislate us out of existence?"

In the place known as the Palace, Nene and Juan tell versions of their lives (a la Puig's Kiss of the Spiderwoman) as if their lives are films or part of a. They want to be the director/controller of the stories. As Juan grows sicker, his ability to tell a coherent story leaves him, and he tries to put together a mishmash of elements into a personal narrative. The result is heartbreaking and highlights how many gay men and women have left no record of their lives; or their lives have been edited out of society's narrative. Torres's "Blackouts" is a stunning fiction of real-life people and events told through the words and visions of two fictional character who stand in for all the men and women who have been erased from history.

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Justin Torres's latest novel, "Blackouts," is nothing short of a revelation. It stands as a contemporary masterpiece that boldly challenges the conventional norms of contemporary literature, pushing the boundaries into the realm of experimental fiction. The narrative takes us to an enigmatic place known as the Palace, where the qualities and location remain undefined. Here, we follow the mental journey of a young queer man, simply referred to as "nene," who tends to a dying friend from his past, Juan Gay. Both nene and Juan are queer, and their poignant connection centers around a unique project: the book "Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns."

This book consists of firsthand accounts collected in the early twentieth century from LGBTQ+ subjects by the queer researcher Jan Gay. The pages of the book are adorned with black marker redactions, obscuring much of the text, but beneath these redactions, the subjects of the study have stories to tell. As Juan Gay waits for the inevitable, he shares some of his own stories with nene and, by extension, the reader, attempting to defiantly resist the erosion of memory and the passage of time.

Justin Torres ingeniously employs text redactions, photographs, and illustrations to dissect the conventions of history and narrative. "Blackouts" goes beyond the boundaries of traditional fiction to reveal the hidden stories, the obscured truths, and the blurred lines between memory and invention.

This is a 5* must read!

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This book is staggeringly good. I can't recommend it highly enough. Thoughtful, funny, sexy, smart, melancholic. It's formally experimental but not inaccessible. It's queer as hell, but will speak to a wide audience. There is so much to shout about with this novel!

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Pensive, unique, and strong-feeling, this book will be beloved by fans who are already fans of Torres, but I think can really appeal to new readers as well. There's a sense of history, loyalty, and family stories, but family extends to community, neighbors, and acquaintances who affect us. It's also a story of medical abuse, evil science, and institutionalized oppression. It's a love story, too, though perhaps none of the characters would admit to it. Beautiful, readable, and fast.

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Scattered words, scattered memories, blank spaces.

Torres keeps company with Juan and his Nene. He stretches time, eking out the moments Juan has left whilst journeying back in time and visiting memories.

Through the fragments he left not blacked out he offers another narrative for the homosexual experience. By the blacking out he removes a lot of the negative narrative but is left only with a few words, fragments that are left after the erasure and the deterioration of memory.

His choice to use different media did not work well for me here. I read this on my kindle and so lost a lot because I could not see the blacked out photos well enough not to bring me out of the experience. I think that a large hardback would give the best experience since a paperback would struggle with it's small format.

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One of the best books I’ve read this year. The relationship is so tenderly wrought, the structure is fascinating, and the blackouts add an additional dimension to the text. Brilliant all around.

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This novel is brilliant and biting while managing to contain a deep and tender relationship at its core. While much of this went over my head, I appreciate Torres' boldness and brilliance and will be recommend this unique novel for years to come.

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A young man tends to a dying soul in the desert in a place called the Palace. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator exchange stories—memories of their youth surrounding love, joy, and family.

In this trailblazing work, Torres emphasizes the importance of own-voice storytelling and brilliantly reclaims queer history through "editing" published texts & images. The use of layered narration is another standout in BLACKOUTS. There are moments when the inner-most narrative refers back to the outer-most storyline, and I find myself absolutely mindblown by Torres' brilliance.

To read BLACKOUTS is less like reading but more similar to admiring an ingenious artwork. BLACKOUTS is experimental, unique in its style, and requires some big brain energy from the readers. I loved it, but stylistically, it will be a hit or miss for readers.

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this book is full of fun little shoutouts to famous 20th century social scientists. it’s also a great exploration of the pathologization of queerness and how that relates to scientific racism.

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Thank you Farrar, Strauss and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC!

Though short, this book will stay with you a long time. The prose is beautiful, and the creativity in playing with the text of a real book makes Torres’ writing stand out. At times, I struggled to connect with Juan or our narrator called Nene, but other times the stories they told made me hold my breath, so engrossed was I.

This is not my usual type of novel, but I wanted to step outside my comfort zone and challenge myself with something new. I am glad I did.

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I became a fan of Justin Torres's work from the very first line of WE THE ANIMALS, and was thrilled to be given an opportunity to read his newest project, BLACKOUTS. (Thank you to Netgalley, the publishers, and the author.)

I hesitate to call BLACKOUTS a novel, simply because it defies so many novelistic conventions, It is equal parts history lesson (tracing the history of early lesbian activist Jan Gay), auto-fiction, imagined history, pictorial and poetic collage, and fictional fever dream.

There were times when I found the writing to be fully immersive, and other times when it felt a bit academic. I also feel like the ebook was not fully conducive to the book's non-textual elements (photos, illustrations, and the namesake blacked out passages from the "Sex Variants" textbook). I plan to purchase the physical book to remedy this.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of this book, and I will read whatever Torres writes next.

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Blackouts by Justin Torres is achingly gorgeous. It's hard to believe it's written as fiction when the characters and details are so vivid and true. Historical references are woven together with poetic imagery, the entire range of human emotion is represented through intimate exchanges, childhood memories, and the raw, human experiences of suffering, survival, and making sense of it all.

I felt as though I was zooming in and out, micro and macro, seeing the human experience on the individual and societal levels. The beauty of the author's words made the journey seem gentle and flowing, reflective and insightful, even when the details of the story were harsh or oppressive. Through tales of people studied for the Sex Variants book and glimpses into the lives our our main characters, we see how connected we are as individuals to the whole, how our identities and beliefs about ourselves are shaped by these collective understandings that are so often based on bias, ignorance, and fear.

I'm really left in awe. Books like these make me feel so grateful for the author and their gifts. I will be reading this one again, soon.

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Blackouts is my favorite type of book. Justin Torres has written a novel about queer history, storytelling, and erasure that felt like a blend of fiction and nonfiction in the most interesting way. The novel reads like a conversation between two queer Puerto Rican men, one young who has come to visit an older friend who is dying. One topic of their conversation is Jan Gay and the book Sex Variants, a sexology study from the 1940’s that pathologizes its queer subjects. The copy of the book has been blacked out, erased to create poetry. Interspersed throughout the novel are poems, portraits and pages of other books. Torres writes with a lyricism and playfulness, riding a line between genres that elevates both. I loved how he used their exchange of storytelling in a way that also brought to mind the stories that have been told that erase history and the humanity of individuals and communities. Blackouts is an ambitious novel that lingers, layers of stories that call to mind the power of storytelling to erase and to create. Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the eGalley.

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Blackouts is deserving of all the recognition and praises it is getting. This text contains so much, but Torres walks us through making it very accessible. I will savor this book for years to come.

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This is a story about how we tell stories -- including our own.  The narrator first met Juan Gay when they were both institutionalized in the same facility several years ago.  Now, the narrator travels to a place called the Palace deep in the desert to spend Juan's last days with him.  Juan's goal is to pass on a project for the narrator to complete -- telling the true story of a study of queer lives in the early 20th century compiled originally by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, who played a formative role in Juan's childhood.  When Jan tried to partner with a well-known scientist to get the study published and distributed to a wide audience, her work was co-opted by a committee and her own contributions erased.  What remains is a text that has largely been blacked out, as well as never before seen photographs, illustrations, and other artifacts.  Juan wants the story of the study itself -- and the leadership of Jan and her collaborators -- to see the light of day, and believes the narrator is the only one who can make that happen.

As Juan and the narrator spend Juan's last days together, Juan shares the history of the study, as well as his own history navigating the world, and prompts the narrator to share his own story.  From these three overlapping narratives, a story of survival, marginalization, resilience, identity, and memory emerges.

This was an interesting and usual book that uses structures in an innovative way to explore the themes at the heart of the book.
At the center of this novel is the question of how we each tell our own stories, when and why we do so, and for whom.  Is Juan sharing his story with the narrator so someone will remember him when he is gone? Or to convince the narrator, in an indirect way, to take on the project?  I also particularly appreciated how the book considered nostalgia and how it interacts with memory -- the ways we may be most nostalgic for times not just of happiness but of survival and how each return to a favored memory reshapes that memory in a way that takes it further away from what may have been its reality.

Strongly recommended!

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A challenging but intriguing read which is elevated by the language, This is very much the sort of novel that some will embrace wholeheartedly because it speaks to their personal experience- and that's a good thing. The stories these two tell one another will resonate regardless of the reader's orientation or preferences, That said, it skips across time and it isn't always clear where it's going. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction,

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