Black Out

BLACK OUT begins very provocatively:
Today something interesting happened. I died.

Annie Powers named her daughter Victory, a symbol of a past she thought she had conquered and left behind. In another life in a very dysfunctional family where her mother fell in love with a murderer and rapist on death row, Annie was part of traumatic events she has tried hard to forget. But now her past is catching up with her. A man she thought was dead, the father of her child, has come back for her, and Annie can no longer tell whether her memories are true or delusions.

There can be no doubt to the reader that Annie Powers has a psychotic problem, a dissociative disorder. At times she sees her former persona as a separate person, someone she hates and show more has tried to destroy. By the time of her death mentioned in the opening lines, she is no longer sure of who she can trust.

Lisa Unger explores Annie's vulnerability as she tries to leave her former life behind. She paints a disturbing picture of Annie's mind as those around her, even those she is closest to, try to persuade her that what she knows has happened hasn't.

The reader may find Unger's technique of slotting in episodes from different time frames difficult to cope with. There are three major slices of time: the present, the recent past, and the deep past; and the book plunges from one to the other with little or no warning, and only contextual clues.

This was an extraordinary book: very provocative in its exploration of how a person with a dissociative disorder may see the world. Looking at it as a thriller, I did find that some of the events stretched the bounds of credibility.

You can read quite a considerable part of the book online, on the author's website: in fact the Prologue and the first 7 chapters, in my copy that is the first 42 pages. There is also a synopsis to read, and a trailer to watch.

Lisa Unger has written 4 books:
Beautiful Lies (2006)
Sliver of Truth (2007)
Black Out (2008)
Die for You (2009) show less

A while back I requested a Lisa Unger book as an ARC, but didn’t win it. She’s been on my radar since and when some copies of her books came my way, I made sure to read one. Although I think the plot was needlessly convoluted, it was a fun book to read. Changeable. Crazy. Shifting. Never knowing which way was up. Like I said, fun. Not in any way believable, but it’s fiction so you have to go with it.

Annie/Ophelia is sympathetic and oddly not sympathetic. She reminds you too much of Mallory in Natural Born Killers and because she’s such an unreliable narrator, it’s not hard to imagine she’s equally culpable in Marlowe’s crimes. Still her childhood is basically a nightmare and its not a surprise she lets herself become show more enslaved by Marlowe. Any port in a storm.

By the end, you’re feeling just as confused and betrayed as Annie. Everywhere you look are people behaving badly and lying. It’s off-putting and not everything is wrapped up tightly. Loose ends abound and I wonder if we’ll see Annie Ophelia again sometime when her friend Ella finally shows. show less

���After reading BEAUTIFUL LIES last year, I went out and bought everything Lisa Unger had ever written. Sadly, I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I liked BEAUTIFUL LIES. I found BLACK OUT very dark, in a gritty, uncomfortable way. I couldn't connect to any of the characters, and no matter how much I desperately wanted to like the heroine (the story was told from her 1st person POV), I couldn't. I found her weak and horribly victimized, and even when she finally took control of her life, to me she was too far gone for it to matter. I could never connect with her, could never muster either pity or sympathy for everything she'd been through. She was too much of a victim, and I wanted a true heroine. The story is well told, show more beautifully written, but it still didn't work for me. show less

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 show more 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".

The major flaw with "Black Out" is how Lisa 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 view this book with a certain amount of frustration. show less

I picked up this book thinking it picked up after Unger's previous novels, "Beautiful Lies" and "Sliver of Truth." I was disappointed when I learned that I would not be reading about the characters that I had gotten used to, but I am glad that I gave this one a chance.

Annie lives an ideal life in a lovely home on the beach in Florida with her husband Gray and their young daughter Victory. Plagued by migraines and black outs, Annie is confronted with a series of events that forces her to remember a series of horrible events from years ago, when she was Ophelia, a troubled young girl with no way out.

This was a gripping thriller with so many twists and turns that I'm still struggling with what was real and what wasn't. At first I struggled with the three main time frames - the present, the recent past and the deep past, but once I had them worked out I was captivated.

Annie is a vulnerable protagonist. She is mentally fragile and suffers from a dissociative disorder. Throughout the book her horrific, abusive past is revealed and, although now happily married with a four-year old daughter, her life is suddenly disrupted as her past comes back to haunt her.

A wonderful psychological thriller that had me hooked from the start.

Lisa Unger has written some great books and she’s written some stinkers. BLACK OUT is somewhere in between.

Ophelia grew up with unloving parents. Her father was mostly absent, both physically and mentally, and her mother seemed too stupid and selfish to be able to love her. As a result, Ophelia became unhinged, mentally ill. And it got worse while she willingly and unwillingly accompanied a murderer through several states. She was traumatized and unable to save herself.

Now Ophelia is Annie. She is happily married and has a child. (Speaking of which, both Ophelia/Annie and her mother pick names for their children like most people pick names for their pets. Victory?) Her mental illness, seemingly, continues.

Because I love this type of show more book, mystery/suspense/thriller, I often must have a willing suspension of disbelief. But BLACK OUT asks for too much. Why were Ophelia/Annie and her husband so duped? This is never adequately explained, at least not enough to suit me.

Worse, though, are the loose ends: Ophelia/Annie’s friend Ella and the detective. Who was Ella? Why is the detective there and suddenly not? No answers, just possibilities. show less