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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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,

This is a fascinating novel of ideas, based on a real midcentury study of homosexuality, and playing with ideas of cultural memory, erasure, and history. It is mostly told in sometimes opaque conversations between two gay Puerto Rican American men, one in his twenties and one much older and on the verge of death. It’s about excavating memory, refiguring the past, and creating queer history. A mesmerizing novel, set in what feels like a liminal space and time, written beautifully.

I loved We The Animals (2011), Justin Torres’s debut novel. Slim and told in vignettes, it follows the coming-of-age of three brothers. It’s a novel I remember less for its plot and more for its indelible images. Blackouts is extremely different—it has no plot, really, and feels more speculative in nature, more fragmented in its structure—and yet I could say the same. I’ll remember this novel for Torres’s excellent prose and its images.

Blackouts is largely a long conversation between two men, both gay and Latinx, but of vastly different generations. The older one, Juan Gay, is dying in a building known as the Palace. Mostly, Juan recounts stories from his life, especially from his childhood, when he was briefly adopted by Jan and Zhenya Gay, a lesbian couple. The Gays were real historical figures—Jan, born Helen Reitman, conducted much of the research for Sex Variants, a psychiatric study that wound up as an anti-gay text. In its speculative fictionalization of historical figures, Blackouts shares DNA with Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, which Torres cites. Hartman uses photos in her text, while Torres uses photos, visual art, and most often, blackout erasures of Sex Variants to punctuate his main narrative (I will note that in the eARC, these erasures were very hard to read).

Blackouts is an apt title—the book begins with the younger man’s blackout, and there are plenty of textual blackouts in the erasures and in the flickering of memory. Torres is concerned with archiving and intergenerational queer history, but suggests that queer history need not be chronological or in any way straightforward. The book has a quality of timelessness even though it engages with histories. I frequently had no idea what was going on, but even so, Torres’s fluid prose kept me reading.

"Blackouts" by Justin Torres is a mesmerizing and brilliantly inventive novel that delves into the complexities of storytelling, identity, and memory. With its unique narrative structure and thought-provoking themes, it's a literary work that will leave a lasting impact.

The story revolves around a young man who tends to a dying soul named Juan Gay in a place called the Palace, deep in the desert. Juan has a project to pass on, involving a remarkable artifact of a book titled "Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns." This book, authored by a queer researcher named Jan Gay, contains accounts collected from queer subjects in the early twentieth century. However, Jan Gay's groundbreaking work was co-opted by a committee, and her name was erased from history.

The novel beautifully weaves together the stories of the characters, the mysterious book, and the erasure of queer history. It explores how stories are filtered, silenced, and manipulated over time, and how these narratives shape our understanding of the past. Through poetic prose and a non-linear narrative, Torres invites readers to confront the gaps and erasures in history and memory.

The characters in "Blackouts" are vividly portrayed, and their personal stories are interwoven with the larger narrative, creating a tapestry of experiences and emotions. Juan and the narrator recount moments of joy, love, and oblivion, bringing the past to life in a way that is both haunting and beautiful.

This novel is a profound exploration of love, loss, and the power of storytelling. It challenges readers to examine the stories they tell themselves and the stories that society tells them, urging us to confront the past and embrace the truth, no matter how difficult it may be.

Justin Torres's writing is a marvel of creativity, intelligence, and subversion. "Blackouts" is a groundbreaking work that reclaims lost histories, celebrates defiance, and shines a light on the voices that have been silenced. It's a powerful reminder of the importance of storytelling in preserving and reshaping our understanding of the world.

In summary, "Blackouts" is an exceptional novel that pushes the boundaries of narrative form and delves deep into the heart of storytelling and identity. It's a must-read for those who appreciate literary innovation and stories that challenge the status quo. Justin Torres has created an astonishing, thought-provoking masterpiece that will leave readers with much to contemplate long after the final page.

Blackouts is a collage of time and relationships. The main relationship is between the narrator and Juan Gay, an older man who is dying in an institution called the Palace. The two met years before in a different institution and the narrator has now sought Juan out. Much of the story is focused on a 1941 study by Jan Gay called “Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns.” The plot itself is conversational between the two men as they look back on Juan’s life (and sometimes the narrator’s as well), now that he is coming to the end of it.

While the writing was beautiful (I highlighted so many lines) and I did appreciate the message the author was trying to convey, I found the book’s structure confusing. There was so much jumping around and it was too much of a stream of consciousness for me. I enjoyed it for the statement that it was, but it was not an enjoyable read for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and FSG for the ARC to review

3.5 — This was a really good book. Torres throws a lot of really interesting themes in the air with the craft of a great writer — stories, storytelling, modes and formats of stories, oral storytelling, passing down stories from generation to generation, what stories are told and which ones are revised or lost — all of this through a queer focused lens. This was a novel both historical and contemporary in scope and vision. I was entranced by this and I LOVE books that make me think as deeply as this one did.

That being said, I will say at times I was equally as lost in the prose (in the confused kind of way) and I found that to be disorienting and not as enjoyable as I’d hoped it would be. A lot of the dialogue between Juan and the unnamed narrator sometimes didn’t work for me either and it took me out of the reading experience whereas I wanted to very much be actually lost in it (in the absorbed kind of way). This was just my experience with it but overall it was a pretty impressive work and I’m really glad I read it.

What a beautifully written novel. A wonderful blend of narrative and history and poetry. I wish it had been longer.