Blackouts, by Justin Torres

I liked this second novel by Justin Torres, author of the 2012 novella We the animals, which I reviewed on this blog back in 2018. Blackouts is critically acclaimed, having won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2023. The book tells multiple stories. The unnamed narrator tracks down a friend from his past who is living in a hotel called The Palace. Juan is dying and the book is framed around the narrator's time with Juan as they tell each other stories about their younger days. Both Juan and the narrator spent time in a mental asylum, which is where they met, and they seem to use these stories to continue to work through some of the same issues they were dealing with then. Juan also tells the narrator about the two women who adopted him and asks the narrator to take on the completion of a project about their lives and research, which was the study of homosexuality. Blackouts includes illustrations from that research which was published without giving credit to the true authors, and the title of the book refers to both the pages of those books which have been redacted carefully with black marker and the blackouts that plague the narrator. The story goes back and forth between narratives about Juan, the narrator, or the two women who adopted Juan. Sometimes it was difficult to figure out who was speaking and the relevance. Many parts of the story didn't seem to go anywhere. I enjoyed reading the book, but I can't say that I loved it.