Luster

LUSTER is a stunning debut novel, and I can't stop thinking about it. I freaking loved it.

Content warnings: casual sex, death of a parent, death by suicide, physical violence involving a partner, prior abortion, miscarriage

The synopsis doesn't do this book justice. Sure, there's casual sex, unconventional arrangements, kink...but that all fades into the background when you realize that it's a mechanism to enable Edie's self-exploration, self-destruction, and self-creation.

This book might not be for everyone. It's a discomfiting read, one that explores our base human impulses. Edie's observations on life, race, and class are sometimes very frank, but other times very subtle. Many reviews have labeled this book millennial and singular, but I felt this book was universal and human in the ways that make us nervous.

At 240ish pages this book touches on way more than I can possibly cover with any brevity so I'm focusing on one element that really stood out to me: the art.

Edie is an artist, so of course her paintings and art are a factor in this book. But I'm thinking more about art as character pairings, geometry and abstraction in relationships, and lighting. There are a lot of binaries: push and pull, light and dark, open and close. (This is especially the case with Edie and Eric, and Edie and Rebecca.) Many of the relationships are shapes that convulse, like the triangle between Edie, Rebecca, and Eric, as the book goes on and certain relationships morph in ways that are unexpected. Art can also be unsettling and grotesque, and you get elements of that here.

Nowhere in the book is “luster” mentioned other than the title. I know what luster is but I couldn't really describe it, so I looked it up in the dictionary. Luster is a sheen, a glimmer, sometimes reflective; it can also be a ceramic coating. And I think that captures this book and Edie's multidimensionality so well. Your feelings ripple and change depending on how you look at Edie or this period in her life. And to some extent, luster is something external, like a coat Edie wears and loses, then finds again.

Of course race and the nature of Edie's relationship to and with both Eric and Rebecca as a Black woman with a white couple is a huge aspect of why this book has been buzzy. I'd point you to Own Voices reviews on this (some are tagged below!).

I will say this – to the white reviewers who can't relate or who don't like how “messy” Edie is, take into consideration what that contributes to the narrative. (Very little!) Inadvertently you are reinforcing that Black women need to be perfect or that they need to behave in a way that is understandable and consumable to you.

I've seen a lot of comparisons to QUEENIE (which I haven't read yet), but my mind kept going to PIZZA GIRL as a comp. I thought LUSTER was more evocative and effective though.

hm this is a weird one and i don't know how to rate it. I'm feeling 3 stars but also 3.5 and can't decide between the two.
Very incredible writing and characters but not really realistic to me as i can't see these characters as people who would really exist. These characters are just characters if that makes sense.

Plot was a bit weird because i wonder how and why things that happened in this book happened.

Main character isn't a good person, she didn't do anything vile but she has barely any morals.
Rebecca is a complex character because she is kinda portrayed as the villain of the story when she isn't really. unless she was the one that killed the dog?? it could only be her as she said "i feel like i'm the only one who has to deal with that dog" (no an exact quote), if so.. she is evil but still somehow the best character in the book

My first thought after finishing this book: “Did anything actually happen?”

The prose was beautiful and it wasn't necessarily boring, but it honestly felt like nothing of importance happened. I can't figure out what exactly I'm supposed to take away from this book and I just have mixed emotions having finished reading it.

Enjoyed this one...it's nearly 500 pages and I was shocked to realize it was over. For the love of heaven don't give this to a young person.

My first thought after finishing this book: “Did anything actually happen?”

The prose was beautiful and it wasn't necessarily boring, but it honestly felt like nothing of importance happened. I can't figure out what exactly I'm supposed to take away from this book and I just have mixed emotions having finished reading it.

Pre-reading this brief review, please accept my disclaimer that there is a lot to unpack in this book that, due to trying to hit some lofty year-end reading goals, I have not taken the time to unpack. The novel follows the story of a mid-twenties black woman in NYC, struggling to establish herself professionally, personally, treading water and fighting a current of racism, sexism, and orphanhood. She ends up dating an older man in an open marriage, and finds herself, in a strange (and hardly believable) twist of events, living in their home with their adopted black teenage daughter. While I found many aspects of the plot so unbelievable as to border magical realism, the language was absolutely seductive in a hazy, trancelike way, replete with references any millennial would appreciate. Both in theme and in the actual writing itself, I can see why this tops the lists of some of the best fiction of the year.

I too felt like 12 gerbils in a skin suit in my 20s, and am definitely glad they're over! This is getting compared to an American version of Queenie (unfavorably to Luster, I think) but other than they're both about a Black woman in her 20s figuring out work and relationships they're not similar at all in tone, writing style, or really even content. The remove/cold observation of the style wasn't really for me. I finished the book to see it through, and liked some of the writing, but the audiobook was just ok.

One sentence synopsis... a wry, sharp, often cringe-worthy, intergenerational story about a young black woman who gets involved in a white couple's marriage.

Read it if you like... ‘Conversations with Friends' by Sally Rooney, or ‘The New Me' by Halle Butler. Leilani smashes together themes of capitalism, race, class, and trauma beneath witty observations and sardonic lines.

Dream casting... Tiffany Boone (Young Mia from ‘Little Fires Everywhere') as unmotivated artist Edie. Adam Brody and Kristen Bell as the married couple she becomes entrenched with.

I'm an open book,” I say, thinking of all the men who have found it illegible.

3.5

Very sharp sentences! However, to be succinct, this book was totally cringeworthy.

I'm conflicted! The writing was 10/10 but i was just disappointed by the ending.

4.5 stars!!!

This book is so fucking good. I am so completely happy to have gotten to read it.

“Akila takes off her headset and runs dizzily over. She puts her arms around me and says, I am so happy right now. I do my best to be cool about this contact, but it has never happened before, and I pat her awkwardly on the shoulder, terrified that a too-enthusiastic reciprocation will alert her to her error, like the way a white person might raise a jungle cat from birth and be pals for a time until the car turns five and realizes it is, in fact, a carnivore. If I'm honest, all my relationships have been like this, parsing the intent of the jaws that lock around my head. Like, is he kidding, or is he hungry? In other words, all of it, even the love, is a violence.”

Could. Not. Stop. Listening.
Evocative, Uncomfortable, and Devourable.
Something that will linger in my mind.

yo some of the prose hit me so hard mate 

Not at all what I expected! Felt like it spanned a few genres and was well-written, but I kept waiting for a big something to happen and it didn't. Left feeling a bit empty at the end, but definitely had some very interesting parts, and finding more out about Edie, Rebecca and Akila's relationships made me keep reading.

Highlights on Kindle.

This book was a trainwreck. Poorly written and all over the place. I am confused about the critical acclaim that it has received.

I hated this book. In our time of coronavirus and hyper-partisan politics it came at me viciously using long sentences steeped in the cultural vernacular of a person fifty years younger than I, filled with references I didn't understand, and the righteous anger of a young black woman struggling to find her place personally and professionally in a society that judges her based on her blackness and her gender and little else.

I loved this book. The driving force of Edie's narration, her unique personality, viewpoint and language, slowly won me over, although it took time. By the last quarter of the book I was mesmerized by her inability to overcome her own choices while persevering as if she could. I was overcome with a sense of pre-ordained doom. I hoped for an epiphany. I savored every word, researched every confusing cultural reference. Because of the way Leilani builds this story and Edie's character, the ending was satisfying for me, although I can't tell you why.

Edie, the mid-twenties protagonist narrates in the first person, sometimes with a nearly stream-of-consciousness style that is immediate but difficult for me because it is steeped in the culture of her age group–forty-five years distant from mine. The challenges of Edie's life, the way she lives it, and the cultural milieu she lives it in are not mine–she is an artist, I was an engineer; she is a passionate, young black woman, I am an older white man; I am privileged in many subtle ways, she is not. She is automatically suspect–by the police, by her employers, by the people she meets–I am automatically trusted.

Those differences are the theme, for me. Leilani had to bludgeon me with it and she almost knocked me out, but I withstood her blows and was given a small window into this life I will never know. I felt viscerally what it was like to be Edie, living with and acknowledging her faults and reveling in her fortitude and her insight.

I read a lot science fiction partly to feel the presence of the other and experience worlds I will never know. Raven Leilani, in Luster has given me the best of that in the familiar setting of my own world, but with a perspective alien to me–that of a young, black woman.

Edie is 23 and embarking on a probably ill-advised date with a middle-aged and married man who decides they'll meet at Six Flags. The writing is sharp and funny. Edie is a bit of a mess, a lowly functionary at a publishing company living in a roach infested apartment and making horrible choices, branding herself the “office slut.” And I get stopped up short, suddenly this starts reading like she's being written by Eric the affluent digital archivist. Like the prose has suddenly been infected by the same white middle aged men it seemed ready to lampoon, and the sharp wit of the story is suddenly blunted and mired in MFA workshopping. Of course Edie is into some casual, sometimes brutal sex with a controlling and aloof older man - but she's also an artist!

And Rebecca the wife is some weird amalgam, thrashing topless in mosh pits and excavating bodies in the morgue, she feels less like a person and more an interesting idea. Fine with her husband's extramarital affairs while raising an adopted black girl, she's what the manic pixie dream girl becomes after 20 years of marriage, countless miscarriages and the numbing comfort of wealth.

So maybe all these sharp edges and the full on dumpster fire of choices Edie continues to make in increasingly improbable scenarios is speaking to some millennial angst that I can't quite tap into. Still, can't wait to see what Raven Leilani has in store next because the writing, when it isn't contorting itself to fit the convoluted meanderings of the story, is incredible.

This novel is sharp and smart, observant and funny and thoroughly enjoyable. I had heard great things about the book and was immediately taken with how honest the narrator was. And it kept getting deeper and smarter. The social commentary was honest without overtaking the story.

My only criticism is that despite the introspection of the narrator, she gets herself into a situation that deserves a little more reflection than I think it was given.

It may only be January, but I think the chances of my reading a better book this year are slim.

I didn't really want to read this, I went in with a negative attitude, so take this review how ever you want.
Now that I have finished it, my thoughts can be summed up with: meh.
I found the entire cast of characters to be morally devoid creatures. Eric, for example, is just an asshole. While Edie might judge men by how kind they are to waitstaff, I set a higher bar and he treated her poorly the entire story.
I thought for a hot minute that this would be an examination of two different generations. But I didn't feel Edie really summed up Millennials. All of the Millennials I know are killing themselves working 3 jobs (with no health insurance) to stay above water and not drown in student loan debt. Really, wouldn't she be Gen Z anyway? And Eric and Rebecca did not symbolize Gen X as I know it either. These characters are just voids, there is nothing there morally, they have no purpose.
So that theory didn't work. Edie was self-destructive but not self-destructive enough to make any kind of difference. She is like one of those little fish that follow whales gobbling up scraps but never really steers her own life.
The whole problem (and why I DNF'd this book back in July when I first tried to read it) is how unbelievable it is. I didn't buy it-not the situation, not the plot, not the motives, none of it. I had a few moments where I actually thought we were on to something:
1. Akila describing her past placements and how she'd rather just stay with Eric and Rebecca despite all the bullshit.
2. The description of Comic Con (which, by the way was something the characters were so excited to attend but Eric manages to ruin the first hour they are there- I told you, he is an asshole).
3. The mosh pit.
4. Rebecca's job- man, I wish that had been explored more.

Ultimately even the most ardent willing suspension of disbelief could not save this novel for me. How did Rebecca KNOW what painting supplies to buy for that one scene? Why was she leaving her money? Why was Rebecca and Akila's body dysmorphia never explored? Who in the hell uses Plan B as contraception OVER other types of contraception? It's Plan B for a reason and it's frigging expensive!

One last thing, at one point Edie considers living in her storage unit, which reminded me of Scorch by A.D. Nauman (somehow does not have a Goodreads listing?). That one really nailed debt and living in a storage container. I may have to find and reread that.

tw death, suicide

okay. brief complaint: run on sentences that were SO LONG, I got lost so many times and found myself rereading over and over. it did not help that many of these run ons were obnoxiously long lists of allusions or references to things I have never heard of and that would be tedious to look up. and sometimes i was just lost generally in the words themselves. for example, “songs you don't so much listen to as project your memory onto the wax,” was one that stuck with me for so long i had to keep it in my notes app for future reference. so as much as i loved this, there were long stretches of it (specifically in the beginning to middle) where i was not understanding much and was just reading over shit.

but genuinely, i digress and that complaint means very little because, by the end, i was like...basically in tears. as it progressed, it was less about a weird set up in this household. it became an insanely emotion illustration of an obscure (and pretty conditional) relationship between women. the MC makes some cruel decisions but i would argue that she does not get a fucking break and this cruelty only stems from that.

the most impressive (and potentially triggering) aspect of this was the way suicidal thoughts were just kind of planted everywhere and they felt authentic and perfectly placed. dare i say, i resonated with some it (but like im okay??). for example, there's this moment where she's talking to the husband and she's talking pretty abstractly about how surviving as a HIM vs. as herself is very different. she defines their relationship and survival as, “a terribly unspecial thing that is just what happens when you keep on getting up and brushing your teeth and going to work and ignoring the whisper that comes to you at night and tells you it would be easier to be dead”. And idk, i cried at that. Leilani just has a way of describing wanting to die! what can i say! anyways, if u get nothing else from this dense ass paragraph, it should be that death is spoken about very bluntly and if that's triggering for you, i would probably steer clear of this one.

if you love stream of consciousness, bluntness (towards sex, death, race, etc), brief dialogue, and open endings, you might like this. the language feels informal/coversational at the start then gets profound as fuck at the end. idk!!!!!! just read it. i literally read it in one day.