<i>Luster</i> is Raven Leilani’s polished and stimulating debut novel, situated sometimes uncomfortably at the intersections of race, class, and generation. It’s the story of Edie, a twenty-three year old Black woman who loses her editorial job in a publishing house after accusations of inappropriate behavior: what guy in the office didn’t Edie hook up with, and what guy in the office would be fired for the same behavior? Edie lives in a dreary Brooklyn walkup with a roomie, an apartment that will familiar to any struggling young professionals scraping by in New York City. Edie’s parents are dead. Speaking of her married lover, Edie tell us that <i>”it turns out that maybe he is the only friend I have</i>”. Love, affection, emotional engagement, friendships, enjoyment: all absent from Edie’s life.

The puzzle at the core of <i>Luster</i> is Edie’s relationship with her lover and his wife, their relationship with each other, and how they tolerated Edie. For fear of spilling the beans, I’ll skip the details. This is a cast of difficult to understand characters. The couple’s recently adopted daughter seems both most sympathetic and most emotionally accessible.

Raven Leilani’s Edie reminded me at times of Jean Rhys’ early protagonists, especially Julia Martin in <i>After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie</i>. Of course, the differences between Leilani and Rhys, and between Edie and Julia, are obvious and many. But Leilani partially succeeds where Rhys succeeded brilliantly, in portraying a largely blank, anomic, and disconnected life, and portraying a woman simultaneously unlikable and sympathetic. Rhys is among my few favorite novelists. <i>Luster</i> might have been improved by a dose of Rhys’ vicious prose parsimony and even by Rhys single minded adherence to bleakness, rather than what Leilani’s ending <i>Luster</i> with Edie’s unexpected epiphany of redeeming self-discovery. On a more trivial note, <i>Luster</i> would have also been improved by alert copy editor alert enough to pic up on Leilani’s weird fixation with “twenty-three,” as in Edie’s age, the age difference between Edie and her married lover, the age of Edie’s landlord, and the age when Edie’s <i>”aunt Claudia would emerge from a small Harlem cult”</I>.

I would like to thank both NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ecopy ARC in exchange for this review.
3.5 stars

Thanks to FSG Books for the free advance copy of this book.

Edie is a young Black woman working in publishing in New York, barely making rent, sleeping with a series of the wrong people. She finds herself dating Eric, a married man from New Jersey in an open relationship. When Edie winds up unemployed and without housing, Eric's wife Rebecca invites her to live with them for awhile, despite not seeming to really be on board with the situation.

Oh my god. How do I even talk about this book? I can't form my own sentences after reading Leilani's, which are each individual works of art that form a masterwork. I kept stopping reading to simply stare at the page when the paragraphs were too perfect. The text drags you down with Edie, with occasional sentences that run on for pages, pulling you both forward and underwater at the same time.

Ugh, I haven't even gotten to the plot yet. It's not a highly plotted story, but I found myself whipping through the pages anyway. LUSTER covers everything from being a Black woman in a white-dominated field to the repercussions of growing up in an emotionally abusive home to simply trying to find yourself in a world that refuses to see you.

I know this review is a confused mess. That's because I am in no way equipped to review and critique a novel of this magnitude. You need this book in your life, I promise.

Content warnings: racism, sexism, self-harm, physical abuse, sexual assault, alcoholism, miscarriage, drug abuse.

When I read The Bell Jar as a young twenty-something I clung to it with such a fervor because I finally saw myself in the pages, even though it was written almost 50 years before. Over the years since, I’ve tried reading other novels that claim to capture the modern, young adult’s search for identity. I was widely disappointed, finding the characters to simply be moody and entitled. I believed I had simply aged out of identifying with the younger generation. Then Luster came along and I alternately can’t stop talking about it and am tongue-tied because it’s Just. So. Good! THIS was the book I needed as a young woman!⁠
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This debut novel is not “soft around the edges” so as to make it palatable and mainstream. It is raw, bold, and makes no apologies. I keep asking myself “How? How? How did she just do that?! How did Raven Leilani just pack all those huge themes into 227 pages and not a single sentence felt forced?! How? How? How?” I want to offer up a million quotes, turns of phrase, and sharp prose but I don’t want to take a single piece of the experience away from a reader.⁠
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This is the best book I’ve read this year! Please please please, if you have ever sought my advice on what to read I beg you to preorder this novel!

Riveting, sad, and hilarious all at once. At one point, the narrator says of the older white man she's seeing: "He has no idea how hard I'm trying." The same could be said for the reader of this book. Leilani seems to pull it off effortlessly, yet it takes great talent and practice to write like this. (Also posted on Goodreads.)

Lord, I don't think I could ever want to be this young again! The things young folk have to go through today. This book was an excellent read that had me holding my breath in anticipation at times and my gut, from laughing so hard, at others. Truly an enjoyable read.

I can’t remember the last time I was this mesmerized, this blown away by a debut novel—or any new novel. Leilani’s writing is so rich, so finely observed and carefully detailed, but also funny, smart, and emotional. It feels like it’s ushering in a whole new era of style—not the dumbed-down minimalism we’ve gotten used to in a lot of millennial novels, but a beautifully maximal lyricism. The story keeps a tight focus on Edie, the delightfully caustic protagonist (reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh’s bitter characters), and primarily one relationship with a man and a family (reminiscent of Sally Rooney’s tight focus on the relationship of just a few characters). But along the way the story touches on seemingly everything, in a way those comparisons don’t quite. It’s not overtly about capitalism or race or gender, but by embedding commentaries on these at the lived-in level of Edie's consciousness, it’s more incisive about them then a bunch of other books that try signal their awareness. I was genuinely sad to finish the novel because of how much I enjoyed the language, like getting to the end of a bottle of very fine wine. I hope this is a huge hit for Leilani and I’m craving lots more from her

This debut from Leilani is so strong. The prose is delicious and intricate, the tone is darkly comical, and the story is intoxicating. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will be eagerly awaiting future work from Raven Leilani.

This is an absolutely stunning debut from Leilani. From the first page, I was hooked by the writing style; the flat tone elevated my reading experience, emphasizing just how much Edie has given up on life and boosting my emotional connection to her. While at first the novel appears to focus on her relationship with Eric, a mediocre white man in an open marriage, it shifts (thank <i>god</i>) and focuses more strongly on Edie's relationship with Eric's wife, Rebecca, and his Black daughter, Akila. Their friendship is tenuous and charged and impossible to look away from.

Not everyone is going to get along with this; I'd shelve it into the same category as <i>Supper Club</i> and <i>The Pisces</i>. <i>Luster</i> is about a messy woman who is just barely keeping it together. She makes terrible decisions, and <i>knows</i> that she makes terrible decisions. It's heartening to see this kind of novel featuring an ownvoices Black woman: as Edie herself comments in the novel, society has lower expectations of Black women and they have to be twice as good to be recognized as such. To allow a Black woman to be messy and difficult is all the more important in this context.

I'm honestly stunned that this is a debut and will be keeping a sharp eye out for Leilani's future works. I'll go as far as to say that she may have cemented herself as an auto-buy author for me and I am not complaining. Definitely recommend this if it sounds like it would be your kind of thing, and am hopeful that we'll see this longlisted for the Women's Prize.

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Luster by Raven LeilaniLuster
by Raven Leilani (Goodreads Author)
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Luster provides an urgent and new voice. Edie is young and adrift in New York, where she flails through life in the way many early twenty-somethings probably do. Jobs, men, family: it's all a mess and she is deeply affected by the struggles she faces.

Edie meets Eric, a married man, online. The two chat for a long time before they begin dating. The story basically spans the length of their relationship, which becomes increasingly entangled as Edie gets involved with his wife and daughter.

The pace and style of Luster is frenetic, which I don't mean as an insult. Everything is buzzing and fast, dizzy with adjectives that makes you feel like everything is spinning out of control much as it is for the protagonist.

In many novels, I find myself identifying with the characters. Even reading YA, I can put myself back into the high school mindset and remember the feeling of those impactful first loves and friendship dramas. But I found Edie to be quintessentially Gen Z, and while I could relate to the challenges of being a 23 year old woman, I felt Edie truly represented a new generation -- an exciting thing to read. Another key difference is that Edie is black, and Raven Leilani makes insightful commentaries about racial injustice in America. This is, unfortunately, always timely, but felt especially so given the current moment.

Luster was not always easy to read, but was definitely a worthwhile exploration of sex, love, race, art, and suburban milieu.

I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3375668792?book_show_action=false

I was disappointed in the writing. It seemed flat and uninspired and a little predictable and not very mindful. The writing gave the impression that the book's narrator was not an interesting person. I kept experiencing little hiccups in my brain as I read where I wanted the language to be more precise in a given sentence. Even if the novel's narrative voice is meant to reflect a character who is not terribly connected with her thoughts and her choices, her voice should be distinguishable from the next novel on the shelf...and listen, everyone but me is going to read and love this novel. I've felt this way about a few 2020 novels, where the language feels almost deliberately written to be uninteresting, but no one else seems to mind.

Thank you to the author, the publishers Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This debut novel is situated - sometimes uncomfortably - at the intersections of race, class, and generations. This is put to great effect by the wry, sharp writing, which I loved. However, I found the overall tone of the story very hard to take. It pulled me down into a quicksand of lugubriousness that I struggled to escape from for much of the book's length.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3

Luster is an amazing debut novel. It was so absorbing, I found myself 'flipping' through page after page without my eyes or thoughts leaving the screen for long stretches of time. It's poignant and brilliant and memorable. Edie won't be easy to forget and I'm so glad I got the chance to read it! Highly recommend. 4.5 stars.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to others, not because it was badly written (it wasn’t) or because it was boring (it wasn’t) but because I didn’t like how uncomfortable I felt throughout the whole thing.
I’m not a squeamish reader - I can do violence, sex, depravity with no problem- but the self-destructiveness and lack of self-respect that the main character exhibited was just so unenjoyable. I wanted to constantly shake her and yell, “WTF?” Unfortunately, she would probably enjoy that.
I think the ending shows her on a slightly more encouraging path, but I didn’t really see much evidence of personal growth to believe she’ll stay on it.

If I could give this book 100 stars I absolutely would!! Wow!! Wowowowowowow! I usually try to be more eloquent when I write my reviews but Luster has knocked all sense of grammar and vocabulary out of my system. To read such a fierce, raw and sometimes anger-inducing book was a privilege. I cannot stress enough to my readers how much I would like them to read Luster. And when you do, savor it. Let the words wash over you, let your imagination see Edie, Eric, Rebecca and Akila (oh my dear Akila) fill your minds and hearts.

It is so refreshing when I read stories of Black people that don’t focus solely on their trauma. We have seen and read SO MANY stories and films about white people who are trying to figure things out while making horrible decisions during their journey. Raven Leilani has done the same with Edie, a young Black woman learning to navigate adulthood and being an artist in New York. She makes questionable decisions in her life (who didn’t at 23?), some that change the course of her life, for better or worse. I was embarrassed, sad, angry and whatever other emotion came bubbling out of me for and at Edie. But I also felt joy for her because she is a character that is fully human. She is not just any trauma she experienced. She is a woman, a lover, an idiot, an artist, a pain in the ass, a person.

Read. This. Book.

This book was a whirlwind. Edie is the voice of a generation of women who find themselves in strange situations with men because of our online dating world. Her relationship with Eric was the most relatable to me as a millennial woman who has dated men online. Edie's disappointment with Eric's real life persona in comparison to his online banter reminded me of all of the hilarious and awkward dates I have been on.

The estrangement that is felt between all of the characters in this book was profoundly described. Tension between characters is the undercurrent of this novel. The relationship between Edie and Rebecca was absurd and difficult to read at times. But I loved their weird relationship. The tender relationship between Edie and Akila created several of my favourite moments throughout the book.

All of these characters were hurt, confused and in some cases unlikable, but that made me like them even more. I really enjoyed viewing this story through the eyes of Edie. Leilani demonstrated the pain and comedy of her complicated protagonist in a way that most authors cannot.

Some of my favourite passages were the ones of Edie painting. Her attempts to win Rebecca over through art and to demonstrate her worth to herself. The last paragraph of the novel hit me hard in the gut. Like the final paint strokes in a masterpiece, it tied everything together and finished the painting.

I will post a forthcoming review on my Instagram page later this week. Thank you again!

“I have come to the part of the night where I am incapable of any uppercase emotion, & every circuit responsible for my cellular regeneration has begun to smoke.”
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Edie {SBF, 23, underemployed artist} & Eric (MWM, 46, having a mid-life crisis) have sex for the first time on the first page of LUSTER, before they’ve even met. He’s got an open marriage, so if they follow certain rules, It’s Okay. But author Raven Leilani starts placing explosives around that foundation immediately, & has soon blasted it all to hell. What follows is a heady cacophony of racial & sexual politics, a burrowing into a life driven by trauma & neuroses, with few of the guardrails that most of us take for granted.
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If my lizard brain wrote reviews this would just be one long wail: THE GODDAMN PROOOOOOSE!!!! Is Raven Leilani even using the same raw material as the rest of us?! Seems impossible. Her sentences are transcendent. Stiletto blades in rococo scabbards. The fluffiest Persian house cat that hasn’t been de-clawed. I spent the entire first chapter screaming perfect lines at friends over text & the entire book grinding them between my molars, savoring their substance. Nothing I can say about this book will be as persuasive as Leilani’s mastery of language is.
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Yet we’ve all had the experience of reading a novel penned by a precocious writer, the lovely sentences of which didn’t drape together into a cohesive garment. Not so here. While this is literary fiction at its MOST litfic’y—obsessed with internality, more pathos than action, likely to lose anyone who reads books for plot only—it never drags or gets lost in its own navel. Two characters ride a roller coaster in the early going, which turns out to be a clever bit of foreshadowing because LUSTER drags the reader forward at a breakneck speed. Each carefully crafted, contemplative sentence is also a crucial accelerant. This propulsion is even more of a marvel when you consider that we spend the majority of the book deep in Edie’s head, where the miasma of depression is paired with a shrugging inevitability toward micro-abuses, occasionally punctuated by dark humor. She accepts (at times even welcomes) a degree of debasement as the tradeoff for connection & visibility. This is the kind of distilled desperation that I would normally only want to view from the other side of the glass; but Leilani had me fully inside and invested, despite not always being fully comfortable.
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Love to be proven wrong about things like this, but I can’t fathom picking up a more beautiful feast of language & humanity this year. Does Raven Leilani have a Genius grant yet?

How about now?

You know I‘ll never TELL you to go buy a book, bc I hate being told what to do & also that’s not the kind of energy I’m trying to put out there. But yo, if you’ve ever trusted my opinion on a book & had that trust validated by your own experience with it, then do yourself the favor of diving on top of the nearest copy of LUSTER that you can find!

This isn't for me. I've tried repeatedly to get into it but at 20%, I''m still not invested. There was one sentence that was over two pages long. I'm sure it's literature gold for some people but I need more straight-forward storytelling.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

I've read one of Raven Leilani's short stories and was really excited to try this. At first glance, Luster seems to be a story you've read many time before: young woman, crappy apartment, underemployed, trying to get her life together. But Luster's beautiful writing and unconventional twists and turns make it stand out.

Luster is the story of a 23 year old woman with body image and self-esteem issues who enters into a relationship with an older, married white man in an open marriage. Their relationship is definitely different (his wife gives them rules). Not so surprisingly, Edie ends up befriending the couple's daughter, who, like her, is Black.

I loved the smart, unflinching writing. Edie's observations are unexpected and so compelling. Something about the narration reminded me of My Dark Vanessa - maybe the brutal honesty of the main character's internal monologue and the 20+ year age difference between Edie and Erik.

Raven Leilani is definitely a debut writer to keep an eye on!

I wasn't expecting this book to play out the way it did based on the description. It had so much more depth and strangeness than was implied by the blurb. In the best way. At first it took time to get used to the level of stark self-criticism of the protagonist, at times it was almost painful to read both her inner thoughts and the situations she created in her world. Once I got through that period of discomfort, I found myself compelled to keep reading to see how the situations played out. The writing was gorgeous, and that alone made it a worthwhile read.

Really unique voice and incredibly well written. Love the main character and how relatable she is. Definitely a book I’d recommend to others.