Luster is the story of Edie, a 20-something woman trying to survive. She is struggling to find her place and direction and ends up in a truly bizarre and cringe-worthy living arrangement *spoiler alert* with the man she is having an affair with.. and his wife and daughter. Her presence there is simultaneously despised and needed. Somehow Leilani had me feeling sympathetic towards every single character, even though their life experiences were so divergent from mine. She explores a wide swath of themes, including sexuality, love, parenting, race relations, police brutality, marriage, friendship, and, believe it or not, more. You may not always enjoy the journey, but this book will stay with you.

Some of the best sentence-level writing I've ever read! Planning to search for and devour all Leilani's short stories now. Often reminded me of a more literary Queenie.

I tried several times to engage with this book because it sounded so wonderful. Others' reviews suggest that I missed out by nor being able to finish it. My loss.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 4, 2020

There is an appealing randomness to Luster, yet every scene in this story of a 23-year-old woman is purposeful. After Edie loses her job as an editorial coordinator for the children’s division of a book publisher, she does food delivery on her bicycle as part of the on-demand economy, joining the other “delivery boys and girls who jet into traffic with fried rice and no reason to live.” She later fills her days with whatever comes along, culminating in a trip to a comic convention that she attends as a black Princess Leia. Along the way Edie observes her environment, frets about her intestines, and questions her choices. A plot that seems to be haphazard and whimsical evolves into a serious story about a black woman who is trying to find a path that will take her beyond condescension and judgment to a destination of her own design.

While still employed, Edie begins having an affair with a middle-aged man who impresses her because he can adequately navigate a wine list. Edie has had flings with pretty much everyone in her office, regardless of gender — she regards opportunities to have sex as the best part of her job — which accounts for her eventual separation from her employment. Edie is sure men lose interest in her when she talks and perhaps that is the way of men, but Edie is so stuffed with ideas that it is difficult to believe anyone would not be delighted to hear her thoughts.

The affair is with a married man named Eric. They meet through an app. Edie worries about their first meeting in broad daylight, the one “where you see him seeing you, deciding in this split second whether any future cunnilingus will be enthusiastic or perfunctory.” Edie is disappointed that Eric takes so long to take her to bed and is thereafter disappointed that he spends so much time traveling on business or doing whatever he does with his wife.

Edie drops into Eric’s home uninvited — in fact, she walks into the house to have a look around, thinking it is empty — and ends up attending Eric’s anniversary party with his wife Rebecca and adopted daughter Akila. Eric and Rebecca are white; Akila is black. Rebecca decides for reasons of her own that she should form a relationship of some sort with Edie, although not exactly a friendship. Rebecca expects Akila to bond with Edie and wants Edie to play the role of “Trusty Black Spirit Guide” in exactly the way Rebecca thinks it should be played, but Akila is thirteen and not about to bond with any adult, particularly not one who has seen her father’s penis.

When Edie loses her job and apartment, Rebecca improbably invites her to move into the guest room. For much of the novel, Edie is trying to figure out how to fit in with the man she sometimes shags, his wife, and the tweener who seems to despise her. At the same time, Edie is painting. Her works are undistinguished, but as she thinks about her life and the circumstances of those around her, she slowly develops a technique that brings an emotional honesty into her creations.

Perhaps Edie is a surrogate for Raven Leilani, at least in the sense that Leilani has certainly learned the importance of taking a hard and honest look at life and to let her critical observations inform her writing. When Edie says about her job, “if a person come to rote work with the expectation that she will be demeaned, she can bypass the pitfalls of hope and redirect all that energy into being a merciless drone” — she is speaking a truth that most people will recognize.

Racism is a central theme that Leilani tackles with subtlety. Before she is sacked, Edie works with a black woman who is enviably better than Edie at being “black and dogged and inoffensive.” Edie’s co-worker criticizes Edie for thinking that by being “slack” and expressing “no impulse control you’re like, black power. Sticking it to the white man or whatever. But you’re just exactly what they expect.” In the other woman’s view, Edie isn’t allowed to be herself, because in a white world, being herself isn’t good enough. Which is, in itself, a form of racism. Edie’s sharp observations of the role black women are expected to play in a business world dominated by white males — particularly white men who are trying to be politically correct and cluelessly botching it — would make Luster worthwhile even if the novel had nothing else to offer.

The behavior of men toward women is another theme. In the dark, “all the wholly unoriginal, too generous things men are prone to saying before they come sound startling and true.” Then they collect their pants and “there is a world beyond the door with its traffic and measles and no room for these heady, optimistic words.” Men are there and then they are not. “I have learned not to be surprised by a man’s sudden withdrawal,” Edie says.

Luster might be seen as a coming of age novel because, while Edie may seem aimless, she begins to understand what is important to her life by the novel’s end. The sentences quoted in this review provide a glimpse of how Leilani focuses so precisely on the world that Edie inhabits, how eloquently she conveys Edie’s thoughts. The novel is wickedly smart, sly, and engrossing. Leilani’s novel may be a debut, but it is written in the assured voice of a seasoned writer who knows exactly what she wants to say.

RECOMMENDED

I was hoping after sitting on my review, pondering how to best describe what I read within these 200+ galley pages, that the words would just flow. Hmmm, not so. I finished reading Luster three (3) whole months ago and still can't tell you what I read. Not because the story was flighty or not interesting. Not because I breezed through or have a shitty memory. I just don't want to spoil you, bookhearts!

Edie is like most young black women in their 20s: stumbling through life with a plan. She has an apartment, an admin job and pursuing her passion as an artist. Her sexual choices are a bit inappropriate but endless, until she meets Eric. At first glance, Eric seems ideal on paper. A digital archivist, a home in New Jersey and an interest in Edie. But he's married with a daughter.

Plot twist! Eric's wife has agreed to an open marriage. How perfect now that Edie finds herself unemployed, becoming friends with the Mrs., and being a positive role model to young Akila. She stakes claim in their house! Can you just imagine where this novel is going? Definitely not your typical romance. It is sharp, comic and contemporary. What an addictive read!

Happy Pub Day, Raven Leilani! Luster is now available.

LiteraryMarie

DNF at 50%. This book felt a bit lost and wandering for the first half, and there was nothing pulling me back to the story. There were a few beautiful lines sprinkled throughout the novel, but for the most part, the writing was bogged down with run-on sentences attempting to be poetic and drive the story forward. I found our main protagonist to be lost and making poor decisions, and I was rooting for her in the beginning. However, I was not enthralled enough with the way this story was being told to continue on.

Meet Edie, orphaned twenty-something, Edie. Edie is struggling to find her way in the world, struggling to find her identity and where she fits. Being a black women in the publishing world adds more layers as she also struggles with persona.

When Edie begins to see a married man in an open relationship, we begin to see that Edie is a creature of habit and those habits are all self-destructive in one way or another. After she loses her job and is evicted from her apartment, her lover’s wife, Rebecca, takes her into the family home.

Edie finds herself in the family home with their adopted tween daughter, Akila, a black child adopted into a white family that just doesn’t understand her.

While I did not love the content of the book it was well written.

All of the characters are incredibly flawed and somehow still marching forward. The novel highlights how much we see and choose not to see, all while hoping that others see the image we project. Edie’s art seems both a blessing a curse; people do not like what they see in her paintings and yet they are probably the most real thing about them.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Luster, the buzzy debut novel from Raven Leilani, is a sparkly and tender examination of sex, love, race, capitalism and a whole lot more. Reading it felt like waking up from a very lovely dream. When we meet its narrator, Edie, she’s working in children’s book publishing, longing to make a career as a painter, and going on her first date with a man in an open marriage. Quickly, though, the tenor of the story changes from a being-young-in-the-city romantic comedy to a narrative like nothing I’ve ever read before.

In a traditional romance, the central relationship might progress after our characters have sex or decide to move in together. Edie and her married boyfriend Eric do both of those things, but Eric’s family comes along for the ride. Feeling lonely and powerful, Edie breaks into Eric’s home after their first hook up and subsequent ghosting, and comes face-to-face with his wife Rebecca.

Rather than veering into some kind of murderous, revenge-motivated thriller, Luster lingers in this discomfort; for the rest of the novel, Edie lives with Eric, Rebecca, and their adopted daughter Akila. Edie’s lost her publishing job and her crappy apartment, and the couple hopes Edie will “know what to do with Akila simply because we are both black,” Leilani narrates.

What emerges are Edie’s absolutely complex, often beautiful, relationships with those three characters. Edie and Eric’s romance quickly becomes a plot device, fun in the beginning but far less juicy than the narrator’s connections with the women in his life. But it allows Leilani to layer in Edie’s loneliness and anxiety, her meditations on intimacy and solitude, and some beautiful writing about fandoms.

From the fateful meeting in Rebecca’s closet, the novel’s tension builds toward their eventual confrontation, in the same way a romcom builds toward a couple finally admitting their feelings for one another. At some point, that tension loomed so large that I started to wonder if Luster would end with Edie and Rebecca running off together. It doesn’t, but in the one brief, closing scene where they do allow in their mutual feelings for each other, it is beautiful, exciting and quickly heartbreaking. In these moments is where the novel is the richest.

Luster is a romantic comedy that Leilani drills down to its most basic parts–love, some jokes, no central tragedy, lots of sex. But in the end, the relationship between Edie and the married couple she’s gotten to know is over. Leilani wraps up her happily ever after in Edie herself, who learns about herself, finds a better job and apartment, and lives a great story that she can maybe sell to Buzzfeed one day. But Edie (and Leilani) are true artists, and probably long for more than internet fame.

“A way is always made to document how we manage to survive, or in some cases, how we don’t. So I’ve tried to reproduce an inscrutable thing. I’ve made my own hunger into a practice, made everyone who passes through my life a subject to a close and inappropriate reading that occasionally finds its way, often insufficiently, into paint,” Luster concludes. “And when I am alone with myself, this is what I am waiting for someone to do to me, with merciless, deliberate hands, to put me down onto the canvas so that when I’m gone, there will be a record, proof that I was here.”

Read my full review at https://bookandfilmglobe.com/fiction/book-review-luster/

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC.

How can one book be so darkly funny, uncomfortable to read, a scathing critique of our times, and so thoroughly enjoyable? Luster is a smash hit.

At first, I was not sure how I would enjoy this book. It is different than what I am used to reading. Halfway through though, the smartness, darkness, and overall well written story took over. This is a great book and I would definitely recommend to friends who are looking to read outside of their normal genre.

Thanks to Penguin Random House Canada's Bond Street Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a digital ARC of "Luster" by Raven Lelani.

As soon as I received approval to read Luster in July, I started reading the book. I was excited to read the book based on its premise – a young Black woman loses her job, moves in with her married White boyfriend, his wife, who has agreed to an open marriage with rules, and Akila, their adopted teenaged Black daughter. I thought, "Wow," this may be an exciting story. Now, what can I say about this novel? Luster tells the story of Edie, a 21-year-old artist, her exploits with men, degradation, relationships with others, and growth. The author's description of Edie's Brunswick apartment with roaches crawling around is a metaphor for her life. She scurries from man to man, person to person, and takes any crumbs they give her. Edie is a scavenger who takes and takes and debases herself. I never understood why Edie would engage in a relationship with Eric, a (white) married man, his wife, Rebecca, or Akila, their adopted Black teenage daughter. I was perplexed and kept trying to understand why Rebecca allowed Edie, who invited herself into their house, to stay; or why Eric didn't kick her out. I realized they had an open marriage with rules, but it didn't make sense since Rebecca was not happy with this arrangement. Was Edie moving into this household inhabited by a Black adopted daughter a plot device? I thought the teenaged Akila had more sense, awareness, and insight on life than Eric, Rebecca, and especially Edie.

I read the book in its entirety and didn't care much for any of the characters. It was uncomfortable reading this book, but I'm glad the author resolved this saga with Edie leaving Eric's household (with prompting), starting to see some value in her life, and deciding to focus on her art. Edie and Eric were a bit too daring and immoral for me. I pondered for weeks over this book before writing this review because I wanted to give a fair assessment. I also weighed the impact of her childhood experiences on her adult life. Luster may be a bold, provocative story, but unfortunately, it was a bit too much for me.

Thank you to FSG and NetGalley for a free digital copy of Luster in exchange for an honest review.

Luster follows the story of Brooklyn-resident Edie who is in her early 20s, and like most of us in our early 20s, making a lot of poor choices. When she starts dating Eric, a much older white man who is an open marriage, she finds her life becoming more and more entwined in his family's as she meets his wife Rebecca and daughter Akila.

I would classify this book as repulsive realism, which is a genre I tend to gravitate toward. Edie is a well-developed, highly flawed character, which means she's very real. I have seen other readers comment they want to give her a hug. And yes, Edie desperately needs a hug and a group of friends outside of Eric and his family. Edie is the type of character to get easily confused with her creator, and while Leilani acknowledges there are parts of her in this book, it is still fiction. Luster reminds you of all the parts of your 20s that really suck - navigating your job that's not yet a career, dating terrible men, figuring out how to sustain relationships, making time to be creative and find joy, and constantly feeling broke.

Leilani also writes poetry, and her prose has a poetic quality to it. There are many beautiful passages that I read twice. Luster is slim, but it felt longer than 227 pages. I'm not sure why it felt that way other than there's a lot that happens in a short amount of pages and it can be hard to read about a character that doesn't seem to get a lot of "wins." But I highly recommend picking this one up, if only to remind yourself of how glad you are to no longer be 23.

This was an extraordinarily crafted character study and I LOVED IT. I almost feel as if I could start it again from the beginning and experience something equally remarkable but utterly different. There were parts where the writing was so precise and exquisite that I could just about taste or see or smell exactly what was being described. Other parts were so viscerally uncomfortable I had to pause and take a deep breath before continuing on. The buzz is absolutely deserved in this case and I highly and without reservation recommend.

A thank you to NetGalley for sharing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is an exceptionally difficult book to review because I cannot boil my feelings down to a simple 'like' or 'dislike' as Luster is definitely one for the books. First, it bears noting that the prudish or sexually inhibited (probably) need not apply as it's slightly unsettling for even the most sexually liberated. It's not the perfectly rendered sexual moments that engender discomfort, however, but rather the sheer vulnerability of the main character who wields her sexuality as both a weapon and a means of self-flagellation. And, so, while you may questions her decisions, you can't help but to empathize with her and hope that she ultimately learns to own her own worth. The emotional appeal of the inarguably young protagonist is one of the primary appeals of this novel. The other is the writing, which is, in a word, sublime. Nary a word is wasted - so crisp and so refreshing that reading it is akin to taking a bite of the perfect apple. A must read for those in search of titillating literary fiction and those who seek novels that speak to cultural consciousness and feminist awareness.

Luster is about a young woman, Edie, who finds herself in a bit of a conundrum, living in the home of her married lover Eric, his wife Rebecca and their adopted daughter Akila after a job loss and home eviction. Yes, there is no denying that to the reader Edie's life is a hot mess but I still wonder whose life isn't when we are allowed brutal unlimited access to their inner thoughts, deepest insecurities, darkest secrets, sexual exscapades and for me the ugliness is sometimes where the beauty lays. Edie is an observer of the world, someone who takes note of any and everything, an old soul. She is also deeply flawed looking for something using physical pain as a substitute for emotional pain. Great literature always has the reader asking "What the hell are you doing?" And I must admit, I asked that question while reading Luster. As broken as Edie is she is not delusional and knows her flaws but the question is whether or not she wants tomake any improvements to her life or maybe she does not think she has to. I love that the characters are smart and that they have careers and don't simply live for the next encounter. All of their jobs or persuit of one made Edie, Rebecca, and Eric interesting and fully developed characters. Luster is not always serious, droll humor is the best way to describe the comical and self depreciating moments in this book. Some will say that Luster has its slow moments, and it does mostly because it written in a the stream of consciousness format, which means we only get Edie's perspective, but it is in those pedestrian moments, also known as real life, Leilani drops some important facts about the people who played a pivital role on Edie's life, such as her first lover and her lack of parental guidance. Overall, I truly enjoyed Luster, it was dense, witty, poignant and sharply executed. This was a five star read for me not because it didn't have flaws but because I felt it captured the beauty and banality of everyday life from young Black woman's perspective.

I’m not quite sure what I just read! Incredibly cringeworthy but also unputdownable. I read this in a single sitting. Race, sex, parenthood, victimhood and the modern age.

“I am good, but not good enough, which is worse than simply being bad. It is almost. The difference between being there when it happens and stepping out just in time to see it on the news.”

This book struck a chord in me, in ways I wasn’t expected. Luster is about loneliness, about wanting to make your mark on the world but not really knowing how. All the characters are complex, imperfect, and prime to be disliked. But in seeing all their flaws and learning what made them, you grow to appreciate them for their realism.

Edie’s relationship with Eric is how she becomes entangled with Rebecca—his wife—and Akila—their adoptive daughter. But it is really Edie’s relationship with this woman and girl that I found more powerful and transformative than her relationship with Eric. Through these women, you see Edie’s own uncertainties, and perhaps a reflection of who she could have been and who she could become.

The theme of Edie’s art throughout was also an interesting way to explore her own personal growth. She uses her painting as a way to learn about herself, to figure out how to make her lasting impression on the world.

Leilani artfully weaves together all the things that a 20-something Black girl might be anxious about: her weight, her looks, whether this man likes her, how she will support herself, how racism will affect her, what her future is going to be like. Her writing is gorgeous and I found myself highlighting phrase after phrase as I read. This is a quiet book, packed with lots of emotions and Edie’s internal dialogue. It is definitely one to pick up.

Huge thanks to FSG for the advance Netgalley and the finished print copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review (pub date Aug 4, 2020). And another thanks to Greenlight Bookstore for the wonderful launch event, featuring the author in conversation with the inimitable Samantha Irby--

WOW. Sometimes a debut book lands with a new voice at the exact right time. That's Raven Leilani's Luster in a nutshell: "And the truth is that when the officer had his arm pressed into my neck, there was a part of me that felt like, all right. Like, fine. Because there will always be a part of me that is ready to die."

Luster follows a young 23-year-old Black woman named Edie whose life is a complete mess: awful cockroach-filled apartment in Bushwick, terrible underpaid publishing job where she's tokenized, strained relationships with her parents who are both deceased, constant casual sex as a way to feel something. Edie's really a visual artist, but she struggles to take herself seriously. Then she loses the apartment, the job--everything.

But then there's Eric: a white middle-aged digital archivist from New Jersey. His wife has agreed to an open marriage (with RULES), so Edie starts a relationship with him. Then, she ends up living in his suburban house in a super white neighborhood. OH AND: Eric and his wife have an adopted Black daughter, who has no Black women in her daily life. So, Edie can sleep with Eric, and live in his house with his wife, and "teach" his daughter about how to be Black, right? WHAT...THE...F?

This book is so wild and awkward and strange. It's a perfect encapsulation of how capitalist white patriarchal society grinds down young women--particularly young Black women. Leilani's sentences are gorgeous, packed with both heartbreak and humor, no matter whether she's talking about abortion or IBS. And she nails that first-person present-tense POV (big props, as someone who is also writing a novel in that perspective, because it isn't easy). Read this one.

Stunning debut. Sharp, funny and emotional and sure to resonate with young folks struggling with employment, relationships and race.

Daring. Ugly. Awkward. Necessary. Raw. Honest. Hysterical. Smart. Unconstrained.

These are all words I’d use to describe Luster, the debut novel by Raven Leilani.
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Based on his liberal use of the semicolon, I just assumed this date would go well. - Edie
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Leilani’s writing is a revelation. I highlighted so many lines and passages in this book that I have to include a few here. Luster is Edie's first-person stream-of-consciousness account what t's like to be a struggling 23-year-old Black woman trying make her way. She almost reminds me of a modern-day Bridget Jones if she were a younger WOC living in Brooklyn in 2020.
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I almost lose a seat to a woman who gets on at Union Square, but luckily her pregnancy slows her down. - Edie
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Edie’s life isn’t necessarily going the way she’d hoped - her Bushwick apartment is infested with mice, she half-asses her job in children’s publishing while dreaming of becoming an artist, and has IBS. When she becomes involved in with Eric, who is 23 years older than she is, married and white, her already off-kilter world really starts to spiral, landing her in the most unlikely place - taken in by Eric’s wife, Rebecca, literally (she moves into their New Jersey guest room) and figuratively when she becomes a friend and mentor to Eric and Rebecca’s adopted black daughter and an ally to the woman whose husband she’s sleeping with.
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I think of all the gods I have made out of feeble men. - Edie
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Edie can be frustrating. She self-sabotages constantly which makes you want to shake some sense into her but as you learn more about why, you want to wrap her in a big hug. Leilani’s descriptive prose and her unpredictable storytelling keeps you on your toes as a reader - I never knew what might happen next - and she doesn’t shy away from life’s ugliness.
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There are times I interact with kids and recall my abortion fondly, moments like this when I cross paths with a child who is clearly a drag.- Edie
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I learned a lot from Edie and her experiences as a young black woman and I won’t soon forget this daring, vivid and exhilarating book. I can’t wait to read whatever Leilani writes next.


Thank you to NetGalley, Farrar Straus & Giroux and the author for an advanced ecopy of the novel to review.