What an incredibly odd book!

I'm talking about Lisa Unger's Black Out.  A non-linear story told in first person, from the point of view of a woman battling mental illness, and major memory loss.  Given those issues, you can just imagine how truly bizarre this book is!

Annie Powers appears to be a perfectly normal woman, in a happy marriage, with a terrific daughter.  But "Annie" is a fake identity.  In fact, she's really Ophelia, a woman who had to literally disappear from her past life of abuse and torture.  Annie's done a pretty good job of blocking out her past.  But those memories are coming back.  And they're being prodded by unknown forces - someone who clearly knows about Annie's past is making his presence known.  In little ways, just subtle enough to really make Annie (and we, the readers) wonder what is real and what is imagined.

No review of this book would be complete without discussing the point of view.  Because this book is written in first person, told completely from Annie's point of view.  But using a strange technique, Annie is "all-knowing".  What I mean is that she's privy to everyone's thoughts, feelings, and memories.  She's even privy to conversations that take place when she's nowhere near the scene.  There's no explanation given has to how Annie knows things that she couldn't possibly know, it's simply the way the book is written.  So, for instance, some of the dialogue reads like this: He's feeling reflective.  He's remembering the time he and I went away together, and it's making him sad.  Bear in mind that Annie might not be anywhere near the character she's talking about at the time.  And she couldn't possibly know what he's feeling or thinking about at the time.  It's simply a bizarre way to write a novel, and I found the technique distracting.

Equally distracting is that the story is told in non-linear fashion.  The timeline jumps constantly.  Sometimes within a chapter.  So one paragraph can take place in present time, while the next one takes place in the past.  Very little hint is given that that timeline has changed, you simply have to figure it out for yourself.  As the story moved further along, this became easier to do.  But in the beginning, I have to say, the story was difficult to follow.

Finally, all is told through Annie's point of view, but Annie isn't always "coherent".  She has issues with mental illness, causing her to sometimes believe she's seeing something that's not really there.  Of course, Annie has no idea this is happening, so she tells the story as if it's all real.  It's frequently up to us, the readers, to figure out what's real and what's imagined.

All of these things would be forgivable if the story, when finally fully told, was "worth it".  But in this case, it really wasn't.  The story was "ok" but nothing more than that.  With over 500 pages, shifting timelines, bizarre narrative, and a lot left up to the reader to figure out for himself, I simply can't recommend this book. 


Die for You

Fragile

Recommended: No