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Blackouts
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez, Torian Brackett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
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Publisher's summary
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
Long-listed, New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2023
National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee, 2023
Long-listed, Washington Post Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, BookPage Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Powell's Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2023
L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist, 2023
Lambda Literary Award Nominee, 2023
Long-listed, The Guardian (UK) Best Books of the Year, 2023
“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 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 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.
Critic reviews
"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
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The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.
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The actual book The Art of War, not a commentary
- By Fred271 on 12-31-19
By: Sun Tzu
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The Holy Bible: King James Version
- The Old and New Testaments
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- Length: 82 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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This newer edition of the King James Bible published in 1769 is usually preferred by most that read it over the older 1611 version. This 1769 edition is highly sought after due to being more reader/listener friendly than the 1611 since many typos were fixed.... We hope your new audio bible will go everywhere with you and be a blessing for years to come.
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Very Good
- By José de Ribera on 12-17-20
By: King James Bible
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He Who Fights with Monsters 2
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- By: Shirtaloon, Travis Deverell
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But Jason Asano is settling into his new life. Now, a contest draws young elites to the city of Greenstone to compete for a grand prize. Jason must gather a band of companions if he is to stand a chance against the best the world has to offer. While the young adventurers are caught up in competition, the city leaders deal with revelations of betrayal as a vast and terrible enemy is revealed. Although Jason seems uninvolved, he has unknowingly crossed the enemy’s path before.
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Contrary to common reviews
- By Karen on 05-21-21
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Yellow Face
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Winner of an Obie and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman, Yellow Face is as timely as ever, wrestling with issues of cultural appropriation, complicity, and artistic freedom. It’s brought to life in this audio-only revival by a stunning all-star cast (many playing themselves) led by Daniel Dae Kim.
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Funny, great audible performance, and good dialogue.
- By Ed the Canadian on 05-04-24
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Point Nemo
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In the heart of the South Pacific lies Point Nemo, the most desolate and remote place on Earth. At its core is a dead zone, devoid of life, where government agencies crash their obsolete satellites and space stations, confident they won't harm a soul. When the International Space Station suffers a catastrophic failure and plummets through the atmosphere, it's here that Mission Specialist Julie Rohr, an astrobiologist studying living space dust called xylem, finds herself marooned. Julie's only hope for rescue lies in the hands of her estranged father, Dr. Finn Maddern, a renowned mycologist.
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Totally original-totally feasible!
- By Lawrence Tate on 04-10-24
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Swing State
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When a recently widowed woman in rural Wisconsin notices her husband’s toolbox is missing, she calls the authorities—and unwittingly starts a chain of events that will forever change her community. What begins as a disarmingly simple mystery blooms into an exploration of loss, the fragility of the environment, and what it means to connect and heal.
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We can all relate
- By Wdj on 03-21-24
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The Boar's Nest
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Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson. Before they were household names, these budding legends called Sue’s Nashville apartment—lovingly dubbed the “Boar’s Nest”—home. Sue’s place was an intimate staging ground where a new breed of singer-songwriters—wounded souls, wayward upstarts—would spur each other on to tap into something bigger, realer.
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Best audio experience in a long time!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 03-21-24
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The Rip
- By: Holly Craig
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- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
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Luxury villas on hot white sand, views for miles over turquoise water. Flawless hostess Penny gathers guests to an island for her husband’s birthday celebrations. But she soon regrets inviting self-obsessed Eloise. When a child vanishes on the night of the party, their perfect island weekend is ripped apart. Even paradise harbours murky secrets… Has he been taken? Has he drowned? In the panic to find any trace, Penny casts about for someone to blame—even if that person is her own daughter, Rosie. Even clear waters descend to pitch black.
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Intriguing, Engaging, AND BEST NARATORS EVER
- By Hadassah on 03-12-24
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Treasure Island
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- By: Robert Louis Stevenson, Marty Ross - adaptation
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Audible Originals takes to the high seas to bring to life this timeless tale of pirates, lost treasure maps and mutiny. When weathered old sailor Billy Bones arrives at the inn of young Jim Hawkins' parents, it is the start of an adventure beyond anything he could have imagined. When Bones dies mysteriously, Jim stumbles across a map of a mysterious island in his sea chest, where X marks the spot of a stash of buried pirate gold.
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A reflective adventure
- By Tad Davis on 09-12-17
By: Robert Louis Stevenson, and others
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What listeners say about Blackouts
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Beatriz
- 11-17-23
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
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- Adam Powers
- 10-30-23
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
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- Alex Carlile
- 12-28-23
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
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- Abby Griffith
- 12-02-23
Beautiful
Incredible! Definitely a book I will want to read again. Such a beautiful text and performance!
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- Christopher J. Jimenez
- 12-28-23
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.
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- Zackary
- 03-18-24
Stunning
I am awestruck by Justin Torres’ writing. And hearing it performed by two different voices only enhances the story. A phenomenal, breathtaking novel.
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- Edward J Greulich
- 03-27-24
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.
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1 person found this helpful