A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, O Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Shondaland, The New York Times Book Review, Boston Globe, Buzzfeed, Kirkus, Time, Good Housekeeping, InStyle, The Guardian, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Self, The New York Public Library, Town & Country, Wired, Boston.com, Happy Mag, New Statesman, Vox, Shelf … Self, The New York Public Library, Town & Country, Wired, Boston.com, Happy Mag, New Statesman, Vox, Shelf Awareness, Chatelaine, The Undefeated, Apartment Therapy, Brooklyn Based, The End of the World Review, Exile in Bookville, Lit Reactor, BookPage, i-D
A FAVORITE BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Barack Obama
A BEST BOOK FOR HOLIDAY GIFTS: AV Club, Chicago Tribune, New York Magazine/The Strategist, The Rumpus
WINNER of the Kirkus Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER * LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER
“So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or melt into a languorous drip; plot suddenly, wildly flying forward like a bike down a hill.” —Jazmine Hughes, The New York Times Book Review
“An irreverent intergenerational tale of race and class that’s blisteringly smart and fan-yourself sexy.” —Michelle Hart, O: The Oprah Magazine
No one wants what no one wants.
And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules.
As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home—though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.
Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life—her hunger, her anger—in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.
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Exacting, hilarious, and deadly . . . A writer of exhilarating freedom and daring.
A darkly funny, hilariously moving debut from a stunning new voice. Luster follows the unforgettable Edie, a hapless young woman suffocating under her own loneliness, whose caustic observations made me laugh out loud and gasp in recognition. Raven Leilani crafts a beautiful, bighearted story about intimacy and art that will astound and wound you. I couldn’t put this one down.
We meet messed up, careless Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York resident Edie. All of Edie’s one-night-stands end in disaster. “I have not had much success with men. This is not a statement of self-pity. This is just a statement of the facts. Here’s a fact: I have great breasts, which have warped my spine. More facts: My salary is very low. I have trouble making friends, and men lose interest in me when I talk. It always goes well initially, but then I talk too explicitly about my ovarian torsion or my rent.”
Twenty-something Edie barely works at her job as managing editorial coordinator for a publishing company’s children’s imprint. Known as the office slut, Edie never practices impulse control, but her need to be validated, seen, and held in high esteem by someone, anyone actually, drives her conduct right into the trash bin. Her newest affair with a boring co-worker Eric leads Edie into another dimension. Having gone too far with her ladies’ room, men’s room, under the desk, in the elevator office romps, HR has had enough sexual harrassment complaints against Edie and witness complaints against her debauchery, and fires her forthwith.
Edie uses her blackness as an excuse for her failures and disappointments. When a new, very attractive, appropriately dressed also black employee usurps Edie’s position, Edie resents her for her willingness to work hard and to conduct herself with dignity. “You think because you slack and express no impulse control that you’re like black power. Sticking it to the white man or whatever.” Edie starts to wonder if she’s actually the one to blame for her problems.
Edie looks to Eric for consolation. Twenty-three years Edie’s senior, she is surprised this white man finds anything appealing in her. Aloof and elusive, married, living in suburban New Jersey with his wife and adopted black daughter, Eric is anything but available. Fate intervenes as Edie becomes friends with Eric’s wife who then invites the out of work, out of food, out of luck Edie to live in their house. Edie witnesses the dysfunction of the family and the coldness of the marriage. In time, she ignites an affair with Eric, an interdependent friendship with Eric’s wife, and a mentorship for being black for Eric’s young daughter.
When Edie’s unprotected sexual activity results in an expected situation, it is Eric’s wife who saves Edie during a very rough time. The bond between the women is strengthened. It is Edie who manages to have a relationship with Eric, his wife, and his daughter although these three cannot seem to have a loving relationship with one another within the nuclear family.
The story suddenly stops, leaving the reader wondering as to what will happen next. Will the saga continue in a sequel? Or, will readers be left without a resolution while only imagining which path Edie’s future will take?
Often hard to read, the author uses stream of consciousness without quotation marks to attribute dialogue. Insight into the main character’s thoughts and motives demonstrates the close relationship between the author and this character she has created. The author understands Edie very well and actions are always true to Edie’s nature.
I need to say the writing is on a higher level than the plot. The story line is improbable. One of my college professors used to say, “If the rocks in your head fit the holes in someone else’s, that’s all you need.” Maybe that’s what’s happening here?
I have no idea what to do with this book. It is chaotic and hectic and at times so frustrating I wanted to throw it across the room! But it’s also brilliant and thoughtful and engaging. I really cared about Edie all throughout. This is not an easy book or a simple book, but it’s such a good read.
Something like a very raw book, with a weird detachment towards relationships; it’s very alienating, but I think that’s the point.
I was dazzled by Leilani’s quirky and cutting sentences and thoughts, and I don’t actually think the book is ultimately as salacious as its press materials make it out to be. I interpreted Edie’s behavior as being a consequence of her deep mourning over the loss of her parents. She’s acting in this unmoored, self-destructive way out of that grief. And yes, sex is involved at first, but I think by the end, the people in the family who are more important to Edie are Akila, the wonderful daughter character, and Rebecca, who is just a singular woman–strong and strange–and I feel that Edie yearns to develop confidence like her. Eric is just an afterthought by the end of the book. And that scene in the Comic Con is one of my favorite I’ve read in a long time.
Smart smart writing. Subtle explorations of interracial dynamics
Raven Leilani’s debut novel ‘Luster’ is a hell of a ride. It centres around Edie, a twenty three year old black woman working in publishing with a myriad of self-destructive tendencies and unresolved trauma, who starts dating a married white man who is twice her age. As her relationship with him progresses, she becomes deeply entangled in his family life and develops complicated relationships with his autopsist wife, Rebecca, and his adopted, black, pre-teen daughter, Akila. This book has an incredibly dark sense of humour, often making me wince and laugh out loud simultaneously. Edie as a narrator is utterly captivating, she brings her world to life so vividly but also speaks with such clinical detachment about what is going on around her. This contrast can often make the experience of reading this uncomfortable, even more so when you couple it with the fact that Edie is constantly making terrible and self-destructive choices that left me cringing out of my skin. But ultimately I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for something challenging but captivating.
Luster is how I like my books sometimes. Dark, shocking and horrific. From the characters and their dynamics to the content, everything about this story was complex and captivating! I’ll definitely be picking up more books by the author in the future!
Who killed the dog?
Edie is twenty-three, an artist living in squalor in Bushwick (Brooklyn, NY), doing daily battle with her loneliness and occasionally having reckless hookups, just to be touched. She meets forty-six-year-old Eric online and they engage in internet banter for a month before finally deciding to meet. When they do, it’s not exactly fireworks, but by then Edie has emotionally invested in the idea of Eric and they begin an affair. He tells her right away that his wife is aware, and has some “rules” for his playing away from home. It doesn’t sit particularly well with Edie, but she has had a long history of settling for less than she deserves.
Through a variety of turns of (mis)fortune, Edie winds up much more embroiled in the life of Eric and his family than she or he ever intended, forging a painful and awkward intimacy with his wife, Rebecca, and his adopted daughter, Akila. Apart from the already interesting premise of ‘Luster’ — the open marriage and all that–the entanglements are made even more complex because though Eric and his wife are white, Eric’s adopted daughter, and Edie, are Black. This may explain, to some degree, just how much of Eric’s family life Edie is permitted to encroach upon. Still, she remains throughout it all very much an outsider looking in, painfully, dreadfully lonely and starving for connections. She makes those connections, imperfectly. With Eric through rough and sometimes degrading sex; with his wife, through her art, and with his daughter, in part because of their shared racial heritage.
I liked this book a lot, but found some parts dense with language and imagery, often at the expense of story and character. I did, however, admire that the author did not glamorize or make a soap opera out of this unconventional situation. If anything, the open marriage with Edie as the third party only underscored the degree to which people are able to compromise themselves simply to avoid being alone.
I think Raven Leilani will be a highly-regarded new literary voice, not just because her writing is beautiful and complex, but because she has a delicate touch with difficult subjects. Though the book is not ostensibly about race, she addresses it with quiet observations like Akila’s need for appropriate hair products and her inability to find them in her town. Unable to turn to her adopted mother, she makes mistakes and missteps which Edie must then rescue her from while her parents remain clueless. Or in a moment just before Akila has a negative interaction with the police and Edie senses that things may go badly. Edie thinks: I know that the moment between when a black boy is upright and capable of speech and when he is prostrate in his own blood is almost imperceptible, due in large and great part to the tacit conversation that is happening beyond him, that has happened before him, and then resists his effort to enter it before it concludes.
Later, when Akila is recovering from the encounter, feeling foolish and ashamed, Edie tells her: “No, there’s nothing we could have done. It was always going to go that way.” and then, “You’re not going to feel better about this … You’re going to feel angry, for a long time, and that’s your right. You’ve earned it, and it means you know you deserve more.” An important moment not only because of what it says about race, but because of how Edie doesn’t see how her words apply to her own circumstances, as the awkward third-party in a marriage that is hanging by a thread that is also unlikely to break.
This book is not easy and quick consumption. I recommend it for those who prefer introspective literary fiction.
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.
Based on his liberal use of the semicolon, I just assumed this date would go well. – Edie
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.
I almost lose a seat to a woman who gets on at Union Square, but luckily her pregnancy slows her down. – Edie
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.
I think of all the gods I have made out of feeble men. – Edie
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.
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
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.
Sexy, dark, truly funny. This book is on fire.
This novel is ridiculously good: gorgeous, dark, and funny, with sentences that’ll wreck you. I will follow this author anywhere she wants to take me.
4.5 stars
This, dear reader, is one heck of a debut novel, and I already eagerly anticipate what Raven Leilani does next.
You may see yourself in Edie. She’s 23 and unmoored. She doesn’t like her job and wants a promotion, yet she can’t muster the energy to put in the work needed to get that promotion. Where she does expend energy is her love life, sleeping with coworkers who should have been left in solely that role. She comes home to a roach-infested apartment that she can’t be bothered to clean. She moves through life, letting it happen to her rather than making choices that could help her. For instance, when she wants–needs–to feel something, she chooses pain over emotions that could guide her toward something more whole.
Edie begins seeing Eric, a married man in an open marriage, albeit one with rules written by his wife Rebecca. When she loses her job, Rebecca invites her into Rebecca and Eric’s home with the hope that Edie, a Black woman, can help their Black adopted daughter Akila.
I loved being in Edie’s head. It isn’t always a pleasant place to be, but Raven Leilani challenges you to think more, feel more, consider more. She pursues race and gender issues, showing you gaping disparities. For instance, Edie is judged for her sexual pursuits with coworkers, yet the men are not. Edie is also judged by another Black woman at work, who judges her for her lack of drive. Living with Eric and Rebecca, Edie’s role is clear: help our Black daughter find a connection. If only Edie could find a healthy one for herself.
Edie’s relationship with Eric is approached with a cold eye. Theirs is a transactional alliance, giving each something they think they need. Eric is as unmoored as Edie, particularly where his marriage is concerned. Whereas she seeks out unhealthy sexual dalliances, he reaches for something perhaps even more toxic. Rebecca, too, has lost her way. An autopsist, she’s used to closely examining people and drawing conclusions, yet she can’t see the forensics in her marriage.
Parts of this book are caustically hilarious, and others have a bittersweet sheen. You dearly hope that Edie can pull herself out of her morass, and you want to pull Akila close, hoping to shield her from her parents’ confusion.
Let me know what you think of this book and if you, too, are a Raven Leilani fan.
Powerful emotions, loneliness, strangely humorous, sexual, starkly moving story. Easily read in one sitting this debut novel is about being young in today’s society.