Blackouts is a very experimental fiction with the use of historical literature and pictures, focusing on human sexuality and queer. It is a mixture of imagination and the truth. It is hard to rate and describe this book but the inspiration behind was very interesting. It was overall an enjoyable book.

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced e-copy!

I can pretty confidently say this was my favourite book of last year.

There's plenty of audacious ideas for books in terms of structure, themes, character work, the lot. I always respect the vision to come up with these sorts of books, but it's certainly not guaranteed that the end product delivered on the full potential of such an idea.

Suffice it to say, Justin killed me to death with this, a compendium of queer history, a reclamation of homophobic psychoanalysis, and just an all around dark, sexual yet whimsical deployment of literature in all forms. A stroke of genius if ever there was one.

i found the storytelling affected, especially when it came to including other pieces of media. maybe re-reading this will make me appreciate it more

I’m not sure why but this one just wasn’t for me. I liked the language used, it was both poetic and simple at the same time, but the actual contents of the book just weren’t one that I vibed with.

This was a wild read. This book constantly blends seamlessly between a dream-like state and reality and makes for an intriguing genre-bending narrative. I did enjoy the book - the two main characters were interesting to read about.

had a hectic week(s) but I want to write a few words about this one while it is still fresh in my mind.

OK, where should I begin. It is a very weird story, an experimental novel if you want to call it like that. A book about real people with fictionalised experiences who is made to look real. A young gay man goes to a place called the Palace to seek an old man, Juan, also gay, who is dying. They met in a mental health facility 10 years before. While “Nene” (the ways Juan calls him) takes care of the sick man they tell each other their life stories. We will be revealed that Luis owns a book about Sexual Deviants. The words are almost all blackened, very few remain readable. Those words, when read together on a page, form a sort of poem. The book is real, but the life the author imagines for one of its researchers, Jan Gay, it is not. So, we have three life stories, photos of those blackened poems and additional photos, some quite explicit, who are there to suggest that the story is real. Like Sebald did, and not only.

As I wrote, it is an odd one, from a structural point of view but also from its content. It gave me a dreamlike feeling.

I listened to the audiobook and read an Arc provided by Netgalley. I am glad I had the e-book because I could see the pictures. However, the font was too small for the book extracts and I could not decipher anything. In the audiobook, the poems were read by the author, while the dialogue between the two characters are voiced by Ozzie Rodriguez and Torian Brackett. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Torian again since I already enjoyed his narration in the Booker prize shortlisted book, If I Survive You.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

I messed up and read this book 2 months ago and forgot to review it, BUT the lingering vibes I have are that it reminded me of Lote by Shola von Reinhold which is obviously a very high compliment! An unusual structure, writing queer people back into history, a blend of fact and fiction and achingly sad at times. Would reread! Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

I messed up and read this book 2 months ago and forgot to review it, BUT the lingering vibes I have are that it reminded me of Lote by Shola von Reinhold which is obviously a very high compliment! An unusual structure, writing queer people back into history, a blend of fact and fiction and achingly sad at times. Would reread!

An incredibly moving novel about memory, loss and queerness. Torres plays around with narratives, telling stories within stories and weaving intricate webs between them. He incorporates blackout poems throughout, breaking the rules on what can be done with form and the concept of a novel. Characters are messy, problematic, and truly three-dimensional - their experiences of love, lust and loss are so poignant and raw, crushing and moving.

A truly unique reading experience and a fantastic novel.

can't help but feel that i didn't totally get this, which is a shame because it was highly anticipated by me. not a lot to keep me invested and reading, though the threads of the premise were so promising.

This book pulls off a rare feat, being both a book that feels like a personal, intimate conversation, but also an experimental and playful novel that pushes against the typical form.

Told as a conversation between two men from different generations, it opens up to allow for in-depth and nuanced discussions on sex, sexuality, relationships, identity politics and belonging, without feeling like it is hitting you over the head with either. Instead, the book allows for some of the members of a generation often framed as 'the lost generation' of HIV/AIDS to be enshrined in their conversations with a younger generation.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

After reading on kindle, I ran to the bookstore to buy a copy for keeps. That says it all.

What a treat that my last NetGalley read of the year would be Blackouts, one of the best books I’ve read this year.

If you can, I would read as little about the story and form in advance as possible. There is real skill and beauty in how it unfolds.

Tender, haunting, dream-like, contemplative, moving. For fans of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Biography of X, Tinman and Max Porter.

Thank you very much to the publishers and NetGalley!

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.

DNF - Not sure if I can pinpoint what didn't work in this one but, from the jump, I struggled to motivate myself to get back to reading; I wasn't invested in the flow of the story.

Blackouts is a lovely and heartbreaking story about the friendship between two gay men - one of whom is on his deathbed. It explores the issues of mental health, of love, lust and sex.

Additionally, it explored the changes in perception towards the LGBT+ community and also sadly how things have stayed the same.

It is a sumptuous story that allows the reader to get completely lost in the story.

I thoroughly recommend this book

Blackouts by Justin Torres is available now.

For more information regarding Granta Publications (@GrantaBooks) please visit www.granta.com.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

📝- Blackouts tells the story of an unnamed protagonist, visiting his older friend, Juan, from times past as he dies. We follow their conversations as they reunite, discussing the parts of each others’ lives they have missed, telling stories of their struggles with sexuality in different moments of history. Weaved throughout this are stories of real people, including pioneers in queer research, with excerpts of other books, photographs, and diagrams interspersed throughout, with some having been redacted (blacked-out) to create a whole new story.

💭 - This was a completely unique read. I will say I struggled to really understand what was happening for the first 20%, but after this I became thoroughly invested in the story. The depiction of the relationship between the two men is brilliantly tender yet subtle, and the telling of stories within the story was done so well also. I really enjoyed the use of different media throughout, and found the endnotes giving detail really interesting too.

Themes: lgbtqia, storytelling, friendship, reflection

A very good start to this month’s reading. One I’d recommend everyone to pick up!

This is such beautiful writing. Juan is dying, and the book describes the conversations between Juan and a younger man, both gay, who share their life histories, and tales of their lovers and sexual experiences. Juan also recounts the history of Jean Gay, who was very influential in his life. There's mix of fact and fiction, and a lot of humour. An unusual book.

I really enjoyed this complex and funny novel. It felt like a labyrinth or puzzle box in which the pasts and stories of the characters were constantly mutating and shifting as they talk in the liminal palace, unbounded by restraint or shame. Interspersed with the two main characters were real narratives of largely forgotten sexologists and queer theorists, and the post modernity of the novel is further highlighted by scenes in which they overhear 'Streetcar named Desire' being rehearsed outside-the narrative feels made up of lots of of layers of other narratives, and both characters have aspects of Blanche. On of the most notable stylistic features of the novel is the fragmentary form- interspersed with the chapters of varying lengths are archive photos and pictures from children's books, this makes us constantly question whether we are reading a novel or a 'found document' and makes the reading curiously nostalgic. The form of the novel (two people telling each other stories) makes us further think of old narratives that do this, Arabian Nights, The Decameron, 120 Days of Sodom, and it is perhaps closest to the Arabian Nights as the storytelling is a way of staving of death, the compassion and curious interest which the young man looks at the decaying body of the older really moved me- and there is a painterly attention to detail- the bruises on the skin, the quality of the flesh, that really spoke of intimacy.
Other reviews have talked about this as a very 'sexy' novel, but I didn't actually find it to be so, although sex acts were talked about, I didn't feel they were intended to arouse but rather that the acts and the way the characters spoke about them revealed as much about them as their descriptions of their childhoods, they were using sex to discover aspects of themselves, versions of themselves through the lens of others.

Sometimes it feels like something you could write when you've a high fever, sometime is seems an essay about the history of LGBTQ+ movements, sometimes it's just a brilliant and poignant book that keeps you reading and thinking.
It's not an easy read but a very good one.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Blackouts by Justin Terres is and does a lot of things. Often being a little undecided makes a book worse than it could be, but in this case indecision is not at the root of the different paths taken.
Firstly, there is the slightly allegorical encounter between two gay men: One is Juan Gay, old and dying; the other, the younger man who narrates the story, remains nameless, although we get to know him quite well. They are in a place called The Palace, and even though it is clear that Juan's end is near, they do not wait for it. They talk and laugh and make up stories; they share episodes of their lives, filtered through narration, through film. We learn that they met once before, briefly, in a psychiatric hospital, where they seem to have ended up mainly because they were gay and their existence was not accepted by society. We listen as the young man tells his companion about his childhood, his growing up, his sex and the jobs he takes to pay the rent and to be what he could be. Behind all this is the idea that Juan wants his friend to finish a project he has started. There is no end to their stories, but there is an end to Juan.

And through all this, the book is also a second thing: the account of the early years of the gay movement and, above all, of Jan Gay (Helen Reiter herself). Juan wants his friend, whom he calls Nene, to tell her story. Not only does he explain how the mostly forgotten activist collected the stories of queer people, how she wanted to give them a voice through publishing but was told that she needed a doctor to make the publication medical and therefore printable; he also introduces her (former) partner Zhenya Gay and her children's books through short vignettes and artistic reimaginings. Juan talks about her history, her life, her father and his lover, who was Emma Goldman and for whose activism for freedom of speech the father was kidnapped and tortured. He talks about her in detail because he was briefly the child in the family of these two women and the model for Zhenya's book illustrations, and because these two deserve to be remembered. The focus, however, is on Jan Gay's research and the way it was transformed and taken away from the queer community by the doctor she eventually found and who published Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns in 1941 - a book that is all judgement and no expression of the queer movement.

And again, through this lens, the book is a third thing: a work of art. For the copy of Sex Variants in the room is one that Juan once found and took with him, and it is marked by a former reader who has taken these stories and made them sensual and gay again by blacking out most of the text, leaving only poetic meaning. These pages are scattered throughout Blackouts and are one of the reasons why a physical copy is absolutely the way to go with this publication. The author also includes medical texts and photographs of people, art and illustrations. Even though I hated the e-reader, I really looked forward to these pages, these literal blackouts that left something touching and real.

These are all things the book is at the same time. While Torres lets the two friends speak, he reflects on the distortions and erasures of queer history and shows how this history has had to be reclaimed. It is a strong narrative to begin with, but it only grows stronger under the added weight.

And then the book is another thing: the ending plays with the question of autofiction or fiction; the author does not let you off the hook by telling you "what is real", because Juan is at once very real and absolutely fictional. In the final chapter, A Sort of Postface, Torres oscillates between his role as narrator and his role as author speaking to an audience. This poses fundamental questions of the nature of stories and lives, and I thought about it a lot. He ends on a reassuring note:

[Juan once said when it comes to ghosts, you can either pretend they don't exist or you can listen]. And anyway, the one thing I can say for sure is that I never tried to tell anyone the truth.

Blackouts was a surprise to me, and it completely sucked me in. I received a review copy of the e-book via NetGalley (thanks!), but my ploy to have fewer physical books has not paid off, as this is an addition to my shelf and a gift to many others I know I will need to make.

Justin Torres is an exceptional writer and Blackouts doesn't disappoint. It explores themes of race, gender, sexuality and medicine, each portrayed individually but also interwoven together remarkably. The writing is poetic and intriguing, and the history and involvement of medicine and politics made me forget I was reading fiction. The non-textual elements of the book (photos, drawings and blacked out passages from the book Sex Variants) are so engaging and add a very unique element to the novel.
These pieces include works by writers incredibly influential to queer movement and text like Radclyffe Hall and Jean Genet, as well as vintage erotica. Torres imagined the person who owned this real collection and created a character who’d come of age through cultural moments of queer history.
It's an unconventional and haunting novel, and I couldn't put it down.
Thank you to NetGalley and Granta for the ARC!