'Darkly funny with wicked insight.This keenly observed, dynamic debut is so cutting, it almost stings.' - Elle I know it's a cliché, but I really cannot recommend this book highly enough.' - Buzzfeed News

'Sometimes, on very rare occasions, you read a debut novel with a narrative voice that is so assured, so confident, so astute, and so devastatingly funny, it leaves you reeling.Leilani's brutally accurate observations and rapier wit make this novel a singular, mordant delight. 'Narrated with fresh and wry jadedness, Edie's every disappointment rendered with a comic twist.Edie's life is a mess, her past is filled with sorrow, she's wasting her precious youth, and yet, reading about it all is a whole lot of fun.' - Vogue 'Exacting, hilarious, and deadly.A writer of exhilarating freedom and daring.' - Zadie Smith, Harper's Bazaar Edie's frank, self-possessed voice will keep a firm grip on readers all the way to the bitter end.' - Publishers Weekly ' moving examination of a young black woman's economic desperation and her relationship to violence.the narration is perceptive, funny, and emotionally charged. Leilani's characters act in ways that often defy explanation, and that is part of what makes them so alive and so mesmerizing: Whose behavior, in real life, can be reduced to simple cause and effect? Sharp, strange, propellant-and a whole lot of fun.' - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 'n unstable ballet of race, sex, and power. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way. 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 of her life―her hunger, her anger―in a tumultuous era. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage―with rules.Īs if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric's home―though not by Eric. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we're ready to take it?Įdie is stumbling her way through her twenties―sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices.

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