Narrator

The first person narrator is the main character of the novel. He remains unnamed throughout Blackouts. At the start of the novel, the narrator is 27 years old. For the past several years, he has been living on his own in Brooklyn, New York. After a mysterious flood and blackout, the narrator flees the city and heads into the desert. He is on his way to a place called the Palace where his friend Juan keeps a room (7). Ten years prior to the narrative present, the narrator and Juan met while they were both institutionalized. Because Juan was much older than the narrator, the narrator originally felt “repulsed, not by Juan himself, but by elderliness as abstraction” (11). This was, the narrator realizes after arriving at the Palace, because as a 17 year old, he feared his “adolescent body succumbing to old age, deteriorating” (11). He therefore did not anticipate growing attached...