Blackouts

A Novel

By: Justin Torres

Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez, Torian Brackett

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post, Time, BookPage

A Must-Read: The New York Times, Time, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, Boston Herald, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, The Bay Area Reporter, Datebook, Electric Literature, The Stacks, Them, Publishers Weekly

“Sweeping, ingenious . . . A kiss to build a dream on.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories—personal 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 Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along. 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 stories—moments of joy and oblivion—and 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 Páramo, 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 made—a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Justin Torres (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

2023, NYPL Best Books of the Year: Long-listed

2023, National Book Awards - Longlist: Long-listed

2024, California Book Awards - Winner

2024, Orwell Prize Finalists: Short-listed

2023, New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year: Long-listed

2023, National Book Critics Circle Award - Nominee: Short-listed

2023, Washington Post Best Books of the Year: Long-listed

2023, BookPage Best Books of the Year: Long-listed

2023, Powell's Best Books of the Year: Long-listed

2023, Time Magazine Best Books of the Year: Long-listed

2023, NPR Best Book of the Year: Long-listed

2023, L.A. Times Book Prize - Finalist: Short-listed

2023, National Book Awards - Winner

2024, Lambda Literary Award - Nominee: Short-listed

2023, The Guardian (UK) Best Books of the Year: Long-listed

"Torian Brackett and Ozzie Rodriguez offer a powerful performance of this 2023 National Book Award winner in which gay men muse over queer history and life.... Brackett's smooth, youthful tones convey the young man's emotions movingly. Rodriguez voices the older Juan, adding distinction with his mature voice and use of Spanish words."—AudioFile

“Blackouts is a historic feat of literature. I’ve never read a book so brilliantly inventive. ‘Must-read’ and ‘masterpiece’ don’t do the book justice. A marvel of the human mind.”—Javier Zamora, author of Solito

“Blackouts gives me what I read fiction for, what I read for at all—the sense of a brilliant mind creating a puzzle in the air in front of me, all intelligence and surprises. Ambitious, disarming, full of a kind of daring that winks as it passes—as if David Wojnarowicz rewrote Nabokov’s Pale Fire and then left it for years in an abandoned building, just for you.”—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Erotic and beguiling, Blackouts prowls the negative spaces that surround our identities, our memories, and our desires, inviting us to think about erasure and collage not just as literary techniques, but as psychological processes, and even as radical acts of cultural and sexual reframing. An intelligent, loving, and genuinely subversive work.”—Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood

Un hombre inspirado

Justin Torres is inspiring
The footnotes are a gold mine of queer history and interesting connections
Enjoyed every minute of this book

Brilliant Conversational Queer Histories Mystery

WOW— I can't tell you the last time I felt like I read a new form of The Novel. Justin Torres is BRILLIANT, his writing here INCENDIARY, and I will be thinking about this story, the characters, the crossovers with real life, and the monument to queerness this incredible novel shines. The kind of novel that makes ancestors smile and descendants feel a part of the lineage of queer histories, I'm so grateful this book exists. The dynamic conversational cinema! The poetry of it all! I highly recommend this book, the audiobook did an honorable job translating the form, I didn't feel like I missed much, and since the book is so good, I sill feel encouraged to get the physical and see what that reading experience is like, with the blackout poems

Interesting Narrative, Combined with a Nonfiction History Lesson

Much of the strengths of this book comes from the way that the story is told. It’s told from the perspective of a conversation between two lovers.
Where this book falls flat is that it introduces many nonfiction elements through this conversation.
Much of this book feels like it’s just preaching to me about LGBTQ+ history. Which is fine, and in fact, I actually gained a lot from it.
The issue arrives whenever it is combined with this conversational narrative, it makes me less empathetic to these characters (whether fictional or otherwise) because at some point it starts to feel like talking heads.
Early on in the book, and about 3/4 of the way through this isn’t the case. It’s mostly the middle section that has this issue.
I think this would have worked a little bit better if the history was either spread out a little bit more evenly, or told in a way that was better hidden.
I’m certain in some respect this is the point. In this case, Justin Torres succeeded. Although it wasn’t my cup of tea., there are clearly things in this novel that are worth analyzing. This is a book made to be analyzed, and now that I know more about the themes of the book, maybe it’ll be better on a second reading. I’ll try to edit this review if it is, but I may not do it for some time.

Not many books left me with a reason to make such a long review, but clearly this book is worthwhile, and starts a conversation about characters, history, and people long forgotten.

Another thing, I would not recommend the audio version. Some of the chapters are poetry written in between the spaces of a censored scientific article. In my opinion, reading this book in an audio format, sort of defeats the purpose, and lessens the impact of the entire point of the story. I suppose it’s possible that my perspective on the book is my own fault for reading it like this, so maybe take my feedback with grain of salt.

Regardless, I would recommend this book. 7/10

A poetic narrative

Dark melancholy humor expressed in a blunt and frank nature. Gripping, and immersive. I found myself both crying and laughing.

Beautiful

Incredible! Definitely a book I will want to read again. Such a beautiful text and performance!

Author sounds like he’s reading in a tin can.

The production on this was pretty poor. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I had read it.

Stunning

I am awestruck by Justin Torres’ writing. And hearing it performed by two different voices only enhances the story. A phenomenal, breathtaking novel.

Disappointed

I don’t get the hype about this book. I tried to like it and finished it. But I really disliked the structure and technique of this writing. I didn’t care for the narration either.

meh

I found this book hard to follow and when I did think I was following I just didn’t care about the characters.

The narration quite nearly out me to sleep.

This story has no beginning and no end. it is a dreary recitation of incidents and episodic events.