Book Review: Luster by Raven Leilani
Luster by Raven Leilani
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: August 4, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
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.
I picked this book up because I heard that transracial adoption played a part in the plot and as a transracial adoptive parent, this intrigued me. Well, it does play a part but that is the only thing in it even remotely similar to my life!
Edie is a twenty-something Black woman living a bleak life full of meaningless, unfulfilling sexual encounters. Most of them have been with men at the publishing company where she works for the children’s imprint. Now she is dating Eric, a forty-something married white guy she met online. He and his wife have recently agreed to open their marriage and Edie is the first woman he’s dated since that decision. Due to unfortunate and slightly bizarre circumstances, Eric’s wife Rebecca ends up inviting Edie to move in, even though she doesn’t exactly like Edie. Eric and his wife (who is also white) have an adopted tween Black daughter named Akila. Edie somewhat unwillingly becomes a mentor to her because Akila has no other Black people in her life.
Edie, Eric and Rebecca are all deeply flawed to say the least. Their lives are mostly joyless. However, Edie narrates her life with the darkest humor that keeps this book from being hopelessly depressing. For instance:
“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.”
Or:
“The waitress tells us the specials in such a way that we know our sole responsibility as patrons in her section is to just go right ahead and f*ck ourselves.”
I loved this book’s humor and brutal honesty. It’s hard to believe that it’s Raven Leilani’s first novel. Highly recommended.
