"An absolutely cracking debut. It’s incredible. Exceptional. It blew me away. "
This newcomer is one to watch, it feels like she could be one of the greats, an author we’ll still be talking about in decades to come.
It’s a sharp, dark, hard look at life yet funny and oh so tender too. Set in New York, it’s the story of 23 year old Edie who lives in a dingy flatshare. She’s brutal, not kind, and mean-spirited even: “I almost lose a seat to a woman who gets on at Union Square, but luckily her pregnancy slows her down” but you root for her, respect her honesty, her openness, her lack of self-pity, her unsentimental nature.
She’s not had it easy: her mother committed suicide, she has trouble making friends, men lose interest in her when she talks. At night, she flits from one sexual conquest to her next hook up, is an editorial assistant in a publishing house by day and is messing it up big time. Then she meets Eric. He’s married. He’s 40. He’s white. He has an adopted black daughter who’s only ten years younger than Edie. As Edie becomes entangled in this family life the book explores themes of race, class, gender, sex, depression and loneliness. And I was transfixed. Read this book! I can’t wait to see what Leilani does next.
| Primary Genre | Family Drama |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
Edie is just trying to survive. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
Luster features in the following genres: Audiobooks of the Month, Family Drama, General Fiction, Sharing Diverse Voices, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Recommendations, Fiction
Luster is available in Paperback, Audiobook, Hardback
Luster was written by Raven Leilani and published by Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan
Luster has 227 pages
£8.99
