Customer Reviews

Black Out: A Novel

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Lisa Unger is a writer of enormous talent, and I really enjoyed her earlier novel BEAUTIFUL LIES. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for her most recent book BLACK OUT.

The major flaw with BLACK OUT is how Unger structures the story. Unfortunately, she decides not to unfold the plot in a linear fashion. Instead she constantly jumps back and forth through time in an episodic manner, which prevents the storyline from gaining any true momentum. I also felt the plot was at times confusing, making it difficult for me to understand what was going on. The ending is similarly ambigious and perplexing, which led me to put down the book with a certain amount of frustration.

I give Unger credit for trying something different, and there's no denying that the prose in BLACK OUT is first rate. I will definitely buy more of her books in the future. Still, this novel was ultimately a listlessly-paced disappointment, and I would recommend first-time Unger readers to try BEAUTFIUL LIES instead.

This book sounded so good. I don't mind flashbacks but this overdid it to the nth degree. When I finished it I wasn't sure what really happened and what was the main character's hallucinations and delusions. None of the characters were people you could warm up to and feel for, not even the supposed victim. In the end you just wanted the bad guy to catch up with her and put her and me out of our misery.

Unger hits a home run with this nail-biter, a story that ratchets up the sense of imminent danger with each chapter. An ordinary wife and mother, Annie Powers, is not so ordinary as she first appears. But then, neither is her husband who works in a company that does business in a post-9/11 world, Gray Powers perhaps offering his wife the unique assistance that allows a troubled young woman to create a different life after years of trauma. But this chance to start over, with Gray and daughter, Victory, on Florida's Gulf Coast isn't purchased without considerable cost. Gray's private enterprises facilitate his shielding of Annie and this is a bargain she is willing to make. Finally secure, even a little careless of late, Annie is suddenly overtaken by an eerie sense that she is being watched, that the impossible has happened and "he" has returned to claim her. She knows she is safe, that Gray has effectively erased the past, but it is all shattered in a moment in the soft repetition of a name, "Ophelia".

Tired of running, too terrified to stay, Annie is thrust into an impossible conundrum, an unbearable reality. As fragments of memories return to her consciousness, Annie relives those dark days of abandonment and humiliation, a young girl with no one to care for her, a ready victim for a crafty predator. But it must end. She must find the strength to confront her demons or die trying. In the world Unger has created for her protagonist, nothing can be taken for granted, nor is Annie the only damaged soul: the walking wounded don't always reveal their scars. Annie's story is riveting, her gradual revelations tinged with years of emotional abuse, adrift in a violent world. Beginning with a first love with serial murderer Marlowe Geary, the details of the past remain obscure, hidden in her subconscious; events conspire to reawaken the terror she has not experienced for five years, when Annie believed her long nightmare was finally over. But now someone is asking questions, she is being followed and all the precautions of wealth and family cannot protect this woman from this menace.

The cast of characters is bizarre: a sociopathic killer, seductive and deadly; a damaged girl, ready fodder for such a predator; a driven man who has seen and done too much, horrified by his own actions; a calculating, controlling father-in-law, arrogant in the exercise of power; a father who repeatedly fails his daughter; a loving child who embraces her parents with the sweet generosity of innocence; and the cold, beating heart of geography known for its curiosities, in reality thrumming with atavistic hunger. Unger explores Florida's underbelly, a terrain blessed with nature's beauty, where evil lurks in the moldy crevasses sunshine never touches. Murder, greed, power- all coexist beneath the placid exterior of the sunshine state, Annie running from the horrors of the past only to meet them again, one last time. Skillfully weaving the theme of a mother's commitment to her child with the incredible chaos of a past that seeks to reclaim her, Annie searches for redemption, uncovering a web of deceit that is shocking. In her final challenge, Annie is fearless. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

In a suspenseful litany of traumatic horror, psychic defense mechanisms, and recovery, Ms. Unger keeps us on tenterhooks, as only she can, throughout her splendid tale of a young woman, brutalized emotionally and physically, caught up eventually in a cat-and-mouse game with her supposed rescuers.

What is real and what is fantasy? These are the questions posed as this thriller leads us on a rollercoaster ride of flashbacks, present-day dilemmas, and eventual resolution. But unanswered questions remain, and even as you think you've discovered what is true, you realize finally that nothing is as it seems.

The title "black out" refers to a fugue state, but can also describe an obliteration of reality, which is the final conclusion you may reach.

Well worth the read!

I read both of Lisa Unger's earlier novels and I loved both of them so I was kind of disappointed in this new one. It is a departure from her initial character and I was eager to delve into this new one but it kept going back and forth, and in a confusing way. I also felt it left a couple of ends loose. All in all, it is not a bad novel but does not measure up to her previous novels.

I loved Lisa Unger's other three books. I started with Die For You and went back to the beginning, which brings me to Blackout.

At its heart, the story of Blackout is very simple; that of a woman with a terrible past who's trying to live a new life, a better life, but the past comes back to haunt her. Ophelia was a child who had everything working against her. A pseudo alcoholic mother who falls in love with a death row inmate. Why is Frank Geary on death row? He was convicted of abducting, torturing, raping and killing over a dozen women. She's convinced of his innocence and derails both her and her daughter's life in order to be with this man no matter how much Ophelia rails against it. This introduces Frank's son into the mix, Marlowe. Ophelia's first love. But does she really love him, or does she fear him more?

Ophelia is now living as Annie Powers. Wife to her husband, Gray, who loves her without question. Mother to her daughter, Victory. But her loving family, expensive house on the beach of Florida can't keep her dark past and its corresponding memories from haunting her, no matter how envious the package that is her life seems to be. No matter what Gray and her in laws tell her, Annie/Ophelia starts to become convinced that her past is going to catch up with her and be her ruination.

Sounds like a very engaging read, doesn't it? At times it is. But it's the structure in which the story is told that left me a little disappointed. The book jumps around alot. There are things about her past with the Gearys that Annie doesn't remember, but over the course of the book they come back to her in fits and starts. Since the book is told in the first person, this leads to a lot of flashbacks as she pieces together parts of her life, as it was, when she was Ophelia. Normally this isn't a bad thing. In fact it makes for pretty engaging reading as you're reading a story told in the first person where the main character is piecing together the mystery that is his or her past, but for some reason it just didn't seem to flow too well in this book. There's also instances in the book where it seems that even the present is a flashback. I don't want to spoil anything, but the passages I'm referring to take place on a boat. Hard to explain without giving too much of the plot away, but maybe anybody who decides to read this will understand what I'm saying if they should read the book.

Is it a 'bad' book? Not by any means. At its core, it's what you'd expect from Lisa Under. A tale of lies, deceipt and betrayal and the character's drive to overcome these things and get to the greater truth. It's just the execution is a little jumbled in its form.

I started out listening to the audio book and was enjoying the reader a lot, but the story became a little confusing to listen to, so about half way through I got the printed version from the library. This is Lisa Unger's third book out four published. I've read them all and sadly enjoyed this one the least. Here's the plot line:

Annie Powers seems to have the perfect life: wealth, a loving husband and a beautiful daughter, but all is not as it appears.

In reality Annie is a damaged woman who was known as Ophelia March as a child. "When my mother named me Ophelia, she thought she was being literary. She didn't realize, she was being tragic". Ophelia was born to a couple who had no clue how to raise a child. Her father was a tattoo artist who left early on in her life. Her mother, always distant, was too busy searching for love instead of nurturing a child. Ophelia's mother hooks up with a serial killer named Frank Geary who is on death row. Her mother attempts to get him a new trial and prove him innocent, all the while Ophelia is being ignored.

If this isn't bad enough, she lets Frank's son Marlowe move in with her and Ophelia. His is a manipulator who begins to take advantage of mother and child, and things go from bad to worse.
In an attempt to get away Ophelia fakes her death, and resurfaces as Annie Powers.

But you cannot escape ones past. She is haunted by her past, and is unsure of what is real and what is imagined, and she is soon believing that her past is not dead at all.

The plot method for telling this story was extremely confusing as the author jumped around too much, in my opinion. Given the fact that the story is a combination of real and imagined events, this only added to my confusion.

Don't get me wrong, Lisa Unger writes some amazing thrillers. I suggest anyone who has not read her starts out by reading Beautiful Lies; it was very very good.

It started out okay, so I said to myself,"this should be a good book; interesting so far," but as it went on I was getting more and more confused. I love psych thrillers, but this was so confusing that I didn't know where her delusions ended and reality began or vice versa. Very hard to follow.

I felt as though I was in the Twilight Zone a few times; what was real and what was her imagination, especially when she was in complete conversations, only for us to find out that there was NO ONE in the scene with her. Hard to differentiate...nothing is as it seems in this book.

The ending was a complete letdown. A few of the questions weren't answered, so I was very disappointed.

Lisa Unger took a bold approach with her latest novel and she is to be credited for her efforts. I must agree with other reviewers though that she crossed the line of intriguing complexity and and ended up with a knotted tangle that was exhaustingly tedious. Linear narration does not have to be dull and while we all know that truth is generally stranger than fiction, a story line that has so many stretches of credulity fails to satisfy. The characters did not call forth enough interest or sympathy and it was overall an easy to put down book.

After reading Lisa Unger's first two books, I was really looking forward to Black Out. But, once I finished the book, I wasn't really sure what I had read. It's disjointed and confusing to say the least and though I don't mind flashbacks, there were so many, that at times I couldn't understand what I was reading. I didn't even enjoy the characters in this book...they didn't feel real to me. If you get it from the library, fine. But, don't buy it!