That passion is another thing Edie uses to feel bad about herself: “I am good, but not good enough, which is worse than simply being bad.There’s something telling about the fact that Raven Leilani’s much-hyped debut novel Luster opens with a transparent misstatement of fact - a lie, in other words - about sex. The only other black woman in the office, who’s more cynically successful at this pose, scorns Edie for thinking “because you slack and express no impulse control that you’re, like, black power… you’re just exactly what they expect”.īut Luster can be soft as well as sharp there’s a luscious, elegant sway to Leilani’s long, building sentences – especially around Edie’s memories of her dead parents, or when writing about her painting. She reluctantly invokes “the spirit of the Grateful Diversity Hire” when she’s about to be fired from her entry-level publishing job for sexual misconduct. When Eric takes her face in his hands, she can “feel the salary in them, the 40-plus years of relative ease”.Įdie is especially cutting when it comes to navigating workplace tokenism, alternately playing along with or (more often) refusing the cruel charade of equal opportunity. You are not a dozen gerbils in a skin casing ”. On an inappropriate first date at a theme park, Edie feels “the high-fructose sun of the park like an insult” her pre-date pep talk to herself goes “ You are a desirable woman. Leilani’s prose mesmerises you go with her, wherever she decides to take youĪnd she delivers many killer lines along the way, sharpened by unexpected details and cynical insights. But Leilani’s prose mesmerises you go with her, wherever she decides to take you. Leilani’s setup, manoeuvring Edie into their family home in New Jersey, stretches credulity, however, as do a few unlikely set pieces featuring the inscrutable Rebecca (dragging Edie into a moshpit at a thrash metal concert, for instance). Pleasingly, Edie’s relationship with the older Eric soon takes second place to stranger, subtler, more complex ones: with his wife, Rebecca – the cool, capable negative image of the hot mess that is Edie – and with their adopted black preteen daughter, Akila. This is an elevated example of the “millennial novel”, swerving cliche. But Leilani writes with such biting distinctiveness that, while Luster may feel extremely zeitgeisty, it never seems like it’s chasing or overly beholden to it. There’s familiarity in her messiness: her attempts to fill the void with sexual attention, her devaluing and debasing herself and her body.

Edie is the sort of flawed female character we’re seeing much more of in fiction and on screen.

Luster the book