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Blackouts
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
23 posts | 12 read | 13 to read
From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost historiespersonal and collective. Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gayplayful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalizedhas a project to pass along to this new narrator. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade storiesmoments of joy and oblivionand resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures? Inspired by Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pedro Pramo, Voodoo Macbeth, the book at its own center and the woman who created it, oral histories, and many more texts, images, and influences, Justin Torres's Blackouts is a work of fiction that sees through the inventions of history and narrative. An extraordinary work of creative imagination, it insists that we look long and steady at the world we have inherited and the world we have madea world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth.
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AnneCecilie
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Pickpick

Our young protagonist visits an older friend at the Palace. He ends up staying there while the friend gradually gets worse. This friend has a box where he‘s kept books on homosexuality and pictures. Through out the book we get glimpses of the picture and the blacked out excerpts from the books, along with their stories and family stories.

A book about friends and family, but also about homosexuality and what is being left out

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Kazzie
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
Mehso-so

I struggled to understand what was happening often. Some elements were lovely, but it didn‘t make much sense cohesively.

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Leftcoastzen
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Pickpick

I get why this isn‘t for everyone. It is a bit different to have nonfiction intertwined with your fiction. I was drawn in and deeply moved by this novel. It is hard to describe. The writing is often beautiful, a great understanding of how humans navigate this life. A feeling of melancholy lingers. I had read the mixed reviews, I found it on the library shelves & decided to give it a try.

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ImperfectCJ
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Well, the results of the "official" #ToB are out and Blackouts won by a landslide over The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, which is interesting to me because I DNFed Blackouts pretty early on. I guess I like the "tyranny of narrative," which judge Kyle Chayka says Blackouts resists. Now I feel like I should give Blackouts another attempt, maybe in a different format, but the thought makes me want to go back to bed.

BarbaraBB I have read such mixed reviews of the book that I am not tempted to read it even though it won the ToB! 7mo
38 likes2 comments
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BkClubCare
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Pickpick

Call me impressed. Dazed, feeling melancholy. This is imaginative and creative without any sense of arrogance. Imho

#ToB24 #HardCover #Purchased Book 10 of 2024

SamAnne Can‘t wait to get to this one. 8mo
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quote
BkClubCare
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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“What the lovest well remains…the rest is dross… What thou lov‘st well shall not be reft from thee… What thou lov‘st well is thy true heritage…

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BkClubCare
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Starting this one. #ToB24

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ncsufoxes
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Pickpick

I listened to this one over audio, which I enjoyed but definitely need to (re)read a physical copy of the book. I wasn‘t sure at first but then did some extra reading & read some interviews on Torres & realized the genius of this story. It‘s a fiction book told about actual people & accounts. Torres said in an interview that he intended people to be frustrated reading this book. He wanted readers to really feel the frustration at the erasure

ncsufoxes of trans people, the LBGTQ people, Puerto Ricans. He wants people to know that there was people many years ago actively trying to erase groups of people based on how they chose to live their lives. It‘s not a book for everyone but I really loved it. One of my favorites of the year. #bookspin 10mo
TheAromaofBooks Great progress!! 10mo
ncsufoxes Forgot my favorite quote from the book: “what‘s been written & said about your kind & what‘s been erased or suppressed” 10mo
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Lindy
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Pickpick

A book that requires some effort is often one that I find the most rewarding. That‘s the case with Blackouts, which I found slow & confusing at first—3 different people with the surname Gay? Juan, Jan, Zhenya?—but I loved We the Animals so much that I was willing to trust Torres. By the 30% mark I was totally invested in this deathbed conversation between two gay men, one much younger than the other. Melancholy and deeply moving. #LGBTQ

ChaoticMissAdventures I have heard this is one you should read the physical book of because of a lot of extra graphic design details? 10mo
Lindy @ChaoticMissAdventures Yes, the added illustrations/documents are important. I‘m not sure what the audio edition does to capture the effect of all of the images. I read an ebook edition. 10mo
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Lindy
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Blackout‘s cover, designed by Na Kim, was on the NYT‘s best covers of 2023 list: “An existential mystery that interrogates modes of erasure & storytelling itself is not an easy sell to most readers. Nor I imagine is it appealing to a designer staring down a blank document & a publisher‘s expectations. This cover proposes a puzzle you didn‘t know you cared about cracking before picking up the book.”

https://ineedabookcover.com/designers/na-kim/

vivastory I really like the cover for The Employees 10mo
Lindy @vivastory Yes… it‘s disturbing. 10mo
35 likes2 comments
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Jas16
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Mehso-so

Two gay men sharing stories as one of them dies. It sounds simple enough but this is a very ambitious book that covered a lot of political and historical territory in a way that didn‘t mesh with me. There were moments that really struck me, especially in the beginning but over all I was left feeling adrift. #tob24

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Lindy
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Juan did not think much of the other residents, wandering souls, whom he referred to as a badling of queer ducks. I‘d never before heard that collective noun. “All bitter,” he said, “or broken. Or lunatic.”

TheBookHippie Oooo I like this one! 10mo
Lindy @TheBookHippie 🦆😁🦆 10mo
IndoorDame Nice! 10mo
26 likes3 comments
quote
Lindy
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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The way I understand it, historians locate a lexicological shift in the meaning of ‘coming out‘ to the midsixties. After Stonewall, the sense of coming out will be firmly attached to the closet, a place of skeletons, isolation, claustrophobia. But no metaphor of the closet existed in the decades before. The original sense of the term coming out was borrowed from debutante cultures, where one came out into the expectant world.

BkClubCare I absolutely love this new understanding and history of the phrase. 8mo
Lindy @BkClubCare One of the many pleasures of this novel is the way queer historical information is passed from the older man to the younger one. 8mo
BkClubCare @Lindy - I found the book to be quite moving. Ty for this post. 8mo
29 likes4 comments
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Lindy
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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“Measurements from 15,000 men & women between ages 21-25 were used to come up with the proportions for these sculptures, which were meant to be the idealized norms for the human form. Every person measured was white.” —Blackouts

I first encountered mention of Normman [“normal man”] & Norma in Heather Radke‘s Butts: A Backstory, in a section where she discusses why ready-to-wear clothing rarely fits.

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Lindy
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Illustration of a baby goat: One of my favourites of Zhenya‘s images, and perhaps another archetype: The soft little boy prancing around in his mother‘s heels?

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Erinreadsthebooks
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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The library stack that‘s been staring me down while I finished my last book. I don‘t think my next read will be the one that‘s tagged. Just flipping through it makes me think it‘s way over my head. 😵‍💫🧐

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squirrelbrain
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Mehso-so

I didn‘t really ‘get‘ this rather experimental book - too clever for me!

Based loosely on a true story it follows the unnamed MC as he arrives to take care of a dying man, Juan Gay. He‘s also meant to be taking on a project that Juan has been working on for years, the much-redacted Sex Variants report from the 1940s. (Which is the true story part)

I found the redacted pages rather poetic, but didn‘t feel connected to the rest of the storyline.

Megabooks Agree! 11mo
rmaclean4 Good to know. I have been curious about this since it won the National Book Award. 11mo
Hooked_on_books Yeah, this one‘s definitely unusual. I listened to the audio and the stories of each of the men as well as their connection captured me. I was less sure about the experimental bits. 11mo
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sarahbarnes I‘m interested to try this one, but your review is noted. 😁 11mo
batsy I'm curious about this, but I also get the sense it might not be to my taste. (Same sense I get from Catherine Lacey's Biography of X, which is why I've been putting that off, too!) 11mo
jlhammar I wasn‘t sure about this one even though I really enjoyed We the Animals. Now that it won the Natl Book Award and is in the ToB, I‘ll probably give it a try. 11mo
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Well-ReadNeck
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Mehso-so

Loved Torres‘ earlier novel, We the Animals. This one is VERY different. The plot revolves around a real historical study/publication called Sex Variants which discusses homosexuality. Did a lot of googling while reading to decipher between fact/fiction. The form was quite speculative and a bit hard to follow for me. Ok, but a lot of work. #ToB24

Megabooks Agree. Great review! 11mo
squirrelbrain I just got this on #netgalley (I only requested it due to #ToB) so I‘m glad I didn‘t ‘pay‘ for it! 😬 11mo
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kelli7990
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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I watched the National Book Awards tonight and these were the winners. I haven‘t heard of or read any of these books but they all sound interesting.

1. Blackouts, Fiction
2. The Rediscovery Of America, Nonfiction
3. From Unincorporated Territory, (Amot), Poetry
4. The Words That Remain, Translated Literature
5. A First Time For Everything, Young People‘s Literature

currentlyreadinginCO I picked up a hardcover of Blackouts bc it is truly beautiful in print, looking forward to it 12mo
8 likes1 comment
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Megabooks
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Mehso-so

I waited eagerly for a book from Torres because I LOVED We the Animals, but this very experimental novel was a miss for me. Perhaps my mind is not agile enough now. The illustrations and photos were amazing though. It‘s an older dying gay man and a younger gay man exchanging stories as the older one dies. The older man and his lesbian mothers are loosely based on real people, and sometimes books with that set up don‘t feel cohesive as fiction.

Megabooks This is the small park next to my library. 💜 12mo
BarbaraBB Beautiful photo 🥰 12mo
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Megabooks
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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#libraryhaul

Still trying to read through the brain fog! I‘m about halfway through Blackouts, but it may be a bit over my head. 😂 What should I try next???

marleed I liked Vampires of El Norte! 12mo
jlhammar I read Erasure years ago and really enjoyed it. Been hearing good things about the new Ron Rash. And definitely want to try the new Lahiri collection. Love the photo 🍁 12mo
Megabooks @marleed I really enjoyed The Hacienda, so I‘m excited to try it! 12mo
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Megabooks @jlhammar I always try to browse a backlist shelf or two when I pick up holds and was so pleased to find the Everett!! I‘ve never read Rash before, but I‘m excited to try him. I am even more excited that Lahiri came out with a new collection! Her translations from Italian haven‘t been as good her early so far (imo), but I‘m hoping it‘s better with more practice. Thanks re: photo! 😁🍂 12mo
jlhammar I loved this short story collection by Rash 12mo
Chelsea.Poole Great photo! 12mo
Megabooks @jlhammar thanks for the rec! I always love a good short story collection. 12mo
Megabooks @Chelsea.Poole thank you! 💜 12mo
Ruthiella Beautiful photo! 12mo
BarbaraBB Sorry to hear the brain fog still hasn‘t lifted. I hope it will soon. I really liked 12mo
Megabooks @Ruthiella thank you! 💙 12mo
Megabooks @BarbaraBB I was so glad to find an Everett at the library (and I still have one I own I haven‘t gotten to). Yeah, it‘s still a struggle here. 👎🏻 I finished Blackouts, and it just didn‘t make much sense. (But Steph isn‘t feeling it either. @reviewsbylola ) Going for something lighter. This is the Everett I own. Have you read it? 12mo
BarbaraBB No I haven‘t! But it sounds fun and maybe more what you need then the pretty heavy Erasure! 12mo
Megabooks @jlhammar started the Rash this morning because it has the longest line behind me. Really enjoying it! 12mo
jlhammar That is great to hear! I was this close to buying it this past Friday. It was a staff rec at my indie. Will have to grab it next time! 12mo
71 likes15 comments
review
Hooked_on_books
Blackouts: A Novel | Justin Torres
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Pickpick

Two men sit together in conversation as one of them is dying. They explore their lives and the realities of living as gay men. This is good. The author is doing much more here than what‘s on the surface, including exploring multiple meanings for the title. I‘m not a rereader, but I suspect this is one that could bring additional things up on a second read.

NBA shortlist, fiction

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