Razor-sharp, provocatively page-turning and surprisingly tender, Luster by Raven Leilani is a painfully funny debut about what it means to be young now.Ī BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Guardian, New York Times, New Yorker, Boston Globe, Literary Hub, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Time, Good Housekeeping, InStyle, NPR, O Magazine, Buzzfeed, Electric Literature, Town & Country, Wired, New Statesman, Vox, Shelf Awareness, i-D, BookPage and more. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young black woman wasn't already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric's home and family.

A New York Times bestseller, Luster is so delicious that it feels illicit. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows. And then she meets Eric, a white middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn't have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. This evening is being generously hosted by Cameron Forbes. 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. No one seems to care that she doesn't really know what she's doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up. She's messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting. Longlisted for the Women's Prize For Fiction 2021Įdie is just trying to survive. It’s been a real whirlwind, she says of the past few months, during which her book went from one of the season’s most anticipated new releases to one of its most-purchased volumes. It's brutal-and brilliant.' - Zadie Smith Edie is a young black woman in New York who starts a relationship with an older white man, and gets complicatedly close to his wife and adopted black. Raven Leilani can’t believe she’s made the New York Times bestseller list for her debut novel, Luster. 'A taut, sharp, funny book about being young now. Who would you recommend this to? People looking to immerse themselves in an original story but also those interested in the perspective of the 'outsider' in a couple's non-monogamous marriage.'A book of pure fineness, exceptional.' - Diana Evans, Guardian Takeaways & Reflections: The protagonist is in her 20s and experiences many of the structural issues facing Zennials and younger Milliennials today, such as underemployment, increasing rents, plus the experiences of racism and sexism in the workplace. What you expected vs reality? Given the title and jacket stylings, I expected it would be a bit of a 'sexy' read, but it was mostly a character study, albeit beautifully written from a fresh perspective. The white married couple have adopted a teenage Black daughter, to whom Edie becomes a sort of mentor.

Gist: A young Black woman, Edie, meets a married white man online who says he is in an open marriage. Publisher & Year Published: Picador USA, 2021

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