“My second novel, “Blackouts”, moves like a dream” – Libération

Twelve years after “Animal Life”, the American author finally releases his second book, “Blackouts”, in the “continuation” of the first with, still, this anonymous narrator, today pushed to open up to the world and in particular to queer culture.

Books, not the least of their virtues, make excellent milestones. Where were we, who were we, twelve years ago, when Justin Torres’ first novel was released, Animal life, who had then left his mark deeply on the landscape of Anglo-Saxon literature, for his ferocity, his own cadence, his disarming sincerity? We sometimes thought about it again, hoping for a reunion from one school year to the next, until we thought less about it, then ended up putting the American among the authors of a single text – that’s a long twelve years.

Was Justin Torres, 44, biding his time in the jungle of publications? Still, the return is roaring: Blackouts, published last year across the Atlantic and crowned with the National Book Award 2024, arrives in France under a golden cover perfectly matching the pocket of Animal life. Certain bridges connect the two, starting with the presence of an anonymous narrator left yesterday at the doors of a psychiatric hospital, this “is” which we knew was not far from that of the writer, at the time in his thirties. “I took the road to the Palace with my last money, alone after having lost everything in the big city, we now read at the beginning of Blackouts which immediately resonates (in Laetitia Devaux’s translation) with the mysterious evidence of the classics. I didn’t have