This starts out like the usual tale of millennial professional and personal disaster (think Moshfegh, Butler) but it becomes so much more than that. That it’s Leilani’s debut is mind-blowing because it’s not only darkly hilarious (“You are a desirable woman. You are not a dozen gerbils in a skin casing” was a favourite phrase of mine) but it dives deep into family, race, inherited trauma, art, death and more. I can’t be the only person who spent the whole novel hoping for Eric to disappear and Edie to get together with Rebecca instead. I loved it.

4 ½ stars (rounded up since this is a debut)


Luster is a deliriously enthralling and boldly subversive debut novel. I was dazzled by the author’s prose, which is by turns dense and supple, by Edie’s sardonic and penetrating narration, and by the story’s caustic yet searing commentary on race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Luster follows in the steps of recent releases starring perpetually alienated young women prone to bouts of ennui, numbness, morbidity, lethargy, and self-loathing. They are misanthropic, they often engage in some sort of masochistic behaviour, and a few of them inevitably spiral into self-destructiveness. In short, they are millennial Esther Greenwoods.
Luster, however, is by no means a carbon copy of these novels, and Edie’s distinctive voice sets her apart from other eternally dissatisfied protagonists. From the very first pages I found myself mesmerized by Edie’s perplexing and hyper-alert mind.

Edie is a recently orphaned 23-year-old black woman who leads a directionless and unfulling existence. She’s unenthusiastic about her desk job and with no friends to speak of she tries to allay her loneliness through sex (think Fleabag). After a series of ill-advised sexual encounters, Edie lands herself in trouble and finds herself staying in the home of Eric, the latest date. Eric is a white, forty-something archivist who is in an open marriage with Rebecca. The two live in a very white neighbourhood with their adoptive daughter, Akila, who is black.

Eric, who is clearly in the midst of a mid-life crisis, isn’t a particularly attractive or charming man. Yet, Edie is desperate for intimacy. Although she’s aware of her own self-destructive behaviour, she’s unwilling or unable to form healthy relationships, romantic and non, with others. Although Rebecca is suspicious of Edie, she wants someone to help Akila, someone who can show her how to look after her hair.
Edie’s hunger for love, desire, acceptance, recognition, and self-worth dominate her narrative. Her fascination—part desire, part repulsion—with Eric and Rebecca sees her crossing quite a few lines. The couple, in their turn, treat Edie in a very hot-or-cold way or use her as if she was little more than a pawn in their marriage game.

Edie’s voice makes Luster the crackling read it is. While Edie often entertains rather ridiculous notions, she’s quite capable of making incisive observations about privilege, race, sexism, and modern dating. Throughout the course of the novel Edie makes a lot of discomforting decisions, and more than once I found myself wanting to shake her. But I also really understood her inability to break free of the vicious cycle she’s in (which sees her seeking affirmation and self-love in the wrong places), and of feeling tired by just existing. I loved her unabashedly weird inner monologue and her wry humour (“She 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 fuck ourselves”). Those few glimpses we get of her childhood and her relationship with her mother and father, deepen our understanding of why she is the way she is.

Luster explores the thoughts and experiences of a messy black young woman, without judgement. Like recent shows such as Insecure, Chewing Gum and I Will Destroy You, Luster presents its audience with a narrative that challenges the myth of the ‘strong black woman’. There are times when Edie is awkward, selfish, and angry. And that’s that.

Luster charts Edie’s sobering yet mischievous, kind-of-sexy, kind-of-weird, sad but funny search for everything and nothing. She both wants and doesn’t want to form meaningful connections with others, she both wants and doesn’t want to be alone, she wants to be used by others, she wants love. Her art is perhaps one of the few pillars in her life. She describes her paintings, the colours she uses, and the artists she likes (Artemisia Gentileschi’s ‘Judith Slaying Holofernes’ gets a mention).
I liked the bond that Edie forms with Akila, one that isn’t uncomplicated but feels like one of the few genuine relationships that appear in this novel (although there were times I liked Rebecca, her intentions towards Edie were ultimately questionable). This is the kind of novel that thrives off uncomfortable truths, awkward interactions, and surreal conversations (that scene at the clown academy was gold). Edie is exhausted by the deluge of microaggressions thrown her way. She tries to be what others want her to be, which is way so many people use her. Even with Eric and Rebecca, Edie is fully aware of being a guest, that she can stay as long as her being there is convenient to them.

To be perfectly honest I find these ‘young women afflicted by the malaise of modernity’ type of novels to be very hit-or-miss (Exciting Times was a definite miss for me). Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl (a hit in my books), shares quite a lot in common with Luster. Both books centred on self-sabotaging young women who become increasingly obsessed with someone who is married (this someone leads a seemingly happy white suburban life), although in Pizza Girl our narrator is far more interested in the wife than the husband. Chances are that if you liked the deadpan humour in Pizza Girl you will like Luster. If you are the type of reader who prefers conventionally nice or quirky characters, maybe Luster won't be the read for you. Lucky for me, I can sympathise and care for characters who make terrible choices or do horrible things (see Zaina Arafat's You Exist Too Much, Rachel Lyon's Self-Portrait with Boy).
Anyway, I'm rambling. I loved Luster, I loved Edie, and I loved Leilani's prose and her punctuation (that scene that just goes on and on...wow). There were a few references or words that I'm not sure I entirely understood, and I have a feeling this is due to my not being American/native-English speaker.
Huge thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an arc. I will definitely be purchasing my own copy once it's available in the UK. Leilani, please, keep writing.

Luster is a striking novel about the myriad ways it is possible to screw up in your twenties and still survive. All of the four main characters are lost in different ways, and end up coexisting in a weird not-quite equilibrium. Edie, the main character is 23. Edie is quite promiscuous and self-destructive. She is holding a great deal of vulnerability about her lack of relational stability. When she starts an affair with Eric, Edie ends up entangled with Eric's wife and adopted daughter. They become a sort of messed-up temporary family. You know it will end in tears but you cannot look away. Four stars.
This site uses cookies. By continuing to use the site, you are agreeing to our cookie policy. You'll also find information about how we protect your personal data in our privacy policy.I agree

Luster is a novel about a young woman trying to survive in New York City who finds herself entangled with a family after she has an affair with Eric, a white man whose wife has agreed to an open marriage. Edie is twenty-three, works half-heartedly in a publishing office, lives in a run down, infested apartment, and sleeps with the wrong men. After a virtual flirtation with Eric, a middle-aged white archivist, they meet, and go on a series of dates. He's in an open marriage and his wife has set rules, but Edie finds herself drawn into the family's world, not only Eric but his wife Rebecca and their adopted black daughter who has no one to help her navigate race.

This book is a gripping, sharp dive into Edie's life, cleverly providing commentary on the modern world and the realities of being young and black and having no direction in life, but also unfolding a complicated and weird interpersonal situation with ever changing nuances and rules, as Edie ends up in the family's home. There's some really fantastic images and lines, like her beating a pregnant woman to a subway seat or her experiences doing gig economy deliveries, and Edie is a vividly imagined character, from whom you get glimpses of backstory but mostly stay in the present. She can be harsh, but also sweet, especially as she attempts to make Eric and Rebecca's adopted daughter like her by playing video games and engaging with her fandom interests.

Luster is a brilliantly observed, well written novel about being young, about navigating sexual and racial politics, and about finding a place to be, even just for a while.

I loved this debut novel. It’s a slice of life story about a woman in her early twenties with a man in an open marriage. Their is a couple of very open door sex scenes but you could skip those if you wanted and it wouldn’t detract anything from the story. Thank you to NetGalley for this EARC.

Here's the thing: I loved Leilani's writing which is smart and characterful and full of flair, witty and dry and tender - but I didn't love this story. The narrative voice is so good, but I found it really hard to be convinced by what is happening at the plot level. And while Edie herself is a complicated figure of modern young femininity who also happens to be Black, the other characters feel weirdly unfinished.

The good stuff for me are the sheer style of the writing: Leilani is subtle (that symbolism quite early on where Edie empathises with the trapped mouse which is going to be eaten by the neighbourhood cat any day...), and she is wonderful on the nagging constant undertow of casual racism akin to that captured by Everyday Sexism. She's also spot-on with the uncomfortable little touches of urban life - the moment when Edie triumphs over a pregnant woman by snagging the train seat, which is also a lovely touch of characterisation and mood.

So what I'm saying is that I'd read Leilani again like a shot - but I just couldn't engage with the plot/story this time - sorry!