Luster
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3.9 • 39 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Winner of the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize for Best First Book
Winner of the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction
Winner of the 2021 Dylan Thomas Prize
Finalist for the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel
Longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
Longlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Named Best Book of the Year by O: the Oprah Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Town and Country, Amazon, Indigo, NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, Kirkus Reviews, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping
Sharp, comic, disruptive, and tender, Luster sees a young Black woman fall into art and someone else's open marriage.
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's also, secretly, haltingly, figuring her way into life as an artist. 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 falling into Eric's family life, his home. She becomes a hesitant friend to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie is the only Black woman who young Akila knows.
Razor-sharp, darkly comic, sexually charged, socially disruptive, Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Whew. There is a lot going on in Raven Leilani’s whip-smart debut, a novel that takes on issues of race, class, sex, art, and identity and doesn’t back down from any of the complicated feelings stirred up. Aspiring artist Edie finds herself in a personal tailspin when she’s drawn into a middle-aged couple’s open marriage and their comfy suburban home. We follow the 23-year-old as she navigates her relationships with the increasingly unreliable Eric, his seemingly placid wife, Rebecca, and their adopted teenage daughter, Akila, who’s as confused as Edie is about how to be a Black woman in white-dominated spaces. Leilani structures the book around Edie’s interior monologue—and she does an amazing job of capturing her heroine’s emotional fearlessness, which intensifies as Edie pours the turmoil surrounding her into her art. Luster is a deeply erotic novel even when there’s no sex on the page. It’s the sort of book you’ll give to your friends so that you’ll have someone to talk about it with.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Leilani debuts with a moving examination of a young black woman's economic desperation and her relationship to violence. Edie is a 20-something low-level employee at a New York city publishing house. She paints on the side, but not often or well enough to comfortably call herself an artist, and she's infatuated with Eric Walker, a married white man twice her age she met online, with whom she explores his thirst for aggressive domination ("I think I'd like to hit you," he says; she lets him) and is caught breaking the rules of Eric's open marriage (no going to his house). After Edie loses her job, Eric's wife, Rebecca, invites her to stay with them in New Jersey. The arrangement functions partly to vex Eric and partly to support Akila, the Walkers' adopted black daughter. An inevitable betrayal cracks the household's veneer of civility, and suddenly Edie must make new arrangements. She does so in earnest, but not before a horrific scene in which Edie and Akila are victims of police brutality. Edie's ability to navigate the complicated relationships with the Walkers exhibits Leilani's mastery of nuance, and the narration is perceptive, funny, and emotionally charged. Edie's frank, self-possessed voice will keep a firm grip on readers all the way to the bitter end.
Customer Reviews
Luster a novel
I loved this book, read it start to finish in one day, I couldn’t put it down. The language is sophisticated, the characters real. At first, the sex seemed to overwhelm but it was just a gateway into the lives, personalities and the story. The pop cultural references and generational differences are insightful and challenging. Thanks for a great read.