Luster is a striking novel about the myriad ways it is possible to screw up in your twenties and still survive. All of the four main characters are lost in different ways, and end up coexisting in a weird not-quite equilibrium. Edie, the main character is 23. Edie is quite promiscuous and self-destructive. She is holding a great deal of vulnerability about her lack of relational stability. When she starts an affair with Eric, Edie ends up entangled with Eric's wife and adopted daughter. They become a sort of messed-up temporary family. You know it will end in tears but you cannot look away. Four stars.

Raven Leilani's debut novel is a spectacular examination of loneliness and the wish to belong. 23-year-old Edie is adrift: After making some inappropriate sexual choices, she loses her admin job in the publishing industry and finds herself with nowhere to go - until the wife of her married lover takes her in. Edie now witnesses their unhappy marriage first-hand, and she slowly becomes the only confidante of their adoptive daughter Akila who, until then, hardly knew any other black people.

The awkward, surreal scenario brings out the alienation of each character: There is volatile Eric, the husband and digital archivist, who is twice as old as Edie, drowns his unhappiness and insecurity in alcohol and takes her to an amusement park for their first date; there is Rebecca, the wife, who works in a hospital morgue where she archives the stories of dead bodies and who tries to approach her problems logically, but can hardly suppress her rage; there is aptly named Akila (which means "intelligent"), the black teenager who has been passed from family to family and who has already registered way too much for her age ("both hypervisible and invisible: black and alone"); and then of course we have Edie, an orphan haunted by intergenerational trauma who tries to archive and make sense of her life through art: She is an aspiring painter trying to capture her impressions on the canvas and in photographs, but there is no one who encourages her to seriously pursue her talent. For Edie, art is an archive of herself: "I've made my own hunger into a practice, made everyone who passes through my life subject to a close and inappropriate reading that occasionally finds its way, often insufficently, into paint." (And, apparently, also into this novel.)

What makes this book so special is Edie's narrative voice: Leilani lets us experience everything through her main character's eyes, and Edie's perceptions are witty and often hilarious, but the heaviness brought about by experiences of racism, sexism, and loneliness always shines through. Both Eric and Rebecca frequently treat her cruelly, turning her into weapon to hurt each other, thus objectifying her and exploiting her trauma.

There is a constant sadness about Edie, and her willingness to oblige others is born out of a lack of self-love, of an exhaustion that grinds her down: Edie is depressed and tired of the constant fight to survive: "(...) there will always be a part of me that is ready to die." But there is also a part of Edie that is willing resist: She loves Artemisia Gentileschi's painting "Judith Slaying Holofernes", in which the 17-year-old-artist painted herself killing her mentor after he had raped her. The way Edie clings to "her" Captain Planet mug in the family house is indicative for her search to find something she can call her own.

It is masterful how Leilani spins a web between these characters and develops dynamics and interactions that always point back to their profound lack of attachment. The scenes she depicts are mostly realistic, sometimes absurd and always disturbing. In numerous narrative vignettes, we learn about Edie's backstory, and sometimes, the people she encounters open a window into their past by sharing some very telling details with her. I was glued to this fascinating, hypnotizing text, its particular tone and unusual vibe.

Raven Leilani (who is also a painter) is a daring author with a very recognizable style, and I hope this novel will get nominated for some awards, because she deserves attention. Oh: And extra points for the scene depicting a job interview at a clown school which reads like a nod to Jesse Ball's Census.