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    Luster: A Novel
    Luster: A Novel
    Luster: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Luster: A Novel

    Written by Raven Leilani

    Narrated by Ariel Blake

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    "There is a universal appeal to [Narrator Ariel] Blake's performance as Edie, a protagonist who may be her own worst antagonist. Blake's delivery has an immensely human, relatable quality that makes the listener want the best for Edie as she struggles to make her way in the world." -- AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

    AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
    A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020
    NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER
    LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER
    WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER

    No one wants what no one wants.
    And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?

    Edie 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. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. 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.

    As 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 becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.

    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. 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.

    A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    "Ariel Blake narrates, expertly inhabiting Edie’s knowing and analytical tone, and revelling in the writer’s winding sentences and caustic one-liners." --The Guardian

    “Exacting, hilarious, and deadly . . . A writer of exhilarating freedom and daring.” —Zadie Smith, Harper’s Bazaar

    "So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or melt into a languorous drip; plot suddenly, wildly flying forward like a bike down a hill." —Jazmine Hughes, The New York Times Book Review

    “An irreverent intergenerational tale of race and class that’s blisteringly smart and fan-yourself sexy.” —Michelle Hart, O: The Oprah Magazine

    Editor's Note

    Make you sweat…

    When a Black artist in her 20s starts dating a white man in an open relationship, her life quickly becomes tangled up in his family’s drama. “But the real fire here,” according to Shondaland, “is Leilani’s writing. Her sentences are gorgeous, and both the prose and the content will make you sweat. What more could you want from a summer release?”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateAug 4, 2020
    ISBN9781250752864
    Author

    Raven Leilani

    Raven Leilani’s work has been published in Granta, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, The Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. Leilani received her MFA from NYU and was an Axinn Foundation Writer-in-Residence. Luster is her first novel.

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    Reviews for Luster

    4/5

    506 ratings17 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      While I do not encourage this lifestyle and cannot relate to this situation in the least, I must say this story is indeed tantalizing. As the story evolves, you can't help but feel the plot lacks depth. This reminds me a lot of the book Queenie with the random repetitive dumb decisions mixed with the lack of background and introspection to break them apart. It's a rat wheel of foolishness that starts entertaining and quickly makes you feel queasy.

      However, I LOVED Leilani's descriptive writing and continuous metaphors. The plot was a 2, but the writing was a solid 4 for sure.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      #UnpopularOpinion
      I have seen/ read countless 5 star reviews for this debut so I’m obviously in the minority but this was one of those pretentious Iowa Writers MFA books ?It just didn’t hold my long term interest ( although the final chapter was very good). Maybe the snarky narration added to my annoyance but this novel felt like inflated fluff. I get the author’s edgy tone and artistic authenticity but the stylistic slickness just irked me.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This book was hard to get into despite the anticipated release. I had a difficult time connecting with characters between the artistic details. It was short so I had no reason not to finish.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Great book. I wish I had the option to read it but listening worked. It reads like a poetic painful wound being filled with gauze.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Gritty. Raw. Dirty. Captivating. By the very end, I wept and thought me, too

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      tell me why i added this to my 2021 faves shelf when i hit 10%...

      this book was so amazing. there are 0 words for what i feel right now. ahhhh I can’t fathom what I just read. it was so everything... it was cold and sterile but also beautiful??

      luster is a detached story about this young women and her relationship with a man, his wife and their black daughter.

      I am finding that i really like unlikeable characters. the kind of writing is so beautiful for me to read. it has a similar feel to my year of rest and relaxation. it’s dry and idk i just love it!

      this is definitely character driven plot and I LOVED IT! I hope raven lelani writes more because this book. this book is a favorite. this was so uncomfortable and awkward and stressful but i couldn’t get enough!

      i loved this book and maybe you will to!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The plot was secondary to the beautiful writing. Would read more from this author.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      I really, really don’t like leaving negative reviews for books since I love books so much…BUT
      This book was over hyped to such a degree. So this book is about a hoe-like individual who screws herself (literally) out of a job and starts living with her sugardaddy and his wife because they want their black adopted daughter to have somebody to lean on. I got nothing from this book. Maybe the next reader will have better luck with it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This is a darkly humorous, melancholy story of a young Black woman struggling with “adulting” in a post-Obama era world where racial tensions are running high. Edie is living her worst life in rodent-infested poverty, losing a low-paying job in publishing, and getting entangled with unsuitable men as she battles self-confidence and abandonment issues (at 23, she’s the only child and orphan of an absentee father and drug-addict mother). She has a blase, though self-aware, attitude about the shambolic state of her finances, career and relationships. She then finds solace and a sort of kindness in Eric, a white, middle-aged man who is in a newly agreed open marriage, and an adopted kid, one who happens to be Black.

      On the brink of homelessness, Edie is taken in by the wife and begins to co-habitate with the family. She grows further apart from Eric, tenuously closer to the wife, and bonds with the young Akila, who even at 12, has lived with feelings of isolation as a Black person in an all-white neighborhood. The life-lesson that Edie teaches Akila about dealing with authority figures at the end is heartbreaking.

      The latter is reflective of excellent social commentary by the writer, done via Edie’s voice, about the fraught state of race relations and the discrimination that exists. The aggressions that Edie and Akila face are written without embellishment. They feel plausible and uncontrived. Surprisingly, although sex is present in a novel ostensibly about an open marriage, it is more subtle and not really the focus of the book (in fact, more attention is given to Edie and the wife’s interactions, vs her trysts with the husband).

      The subject matter has and will polarize readers, as Edie is flawed and makes several selfish choices, putting her gratification first above other people’s relationships. Other readers may get frustrated by the bored millennial tone of the narrator and Edie’s inability to be held accountable for certain things (“This isn’t my fault”, she cries to Rebecca towards the end. “The slogan of your generation” is the caustic response.)

      But nearly all reviews I’ve seen agreed that the writing is beautiful. Leilani Raven writes in an exquisite style with a comic-enough tone to keep a reader from despairing over the state of Edie’s crumbling world. Her writing was the best thing about this book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      There were some nuggets here made better by beautiful writing, but overall, this was a disappointing read. Nothing much happened, and the things that did, didn't make sense. It felt as if the author did a bunch of creative writing exercises on description, called it a scene, and threw it in the book.
      Because of that, the book had no emotional weight, no tension, nothing to chew on. I didn't care what happened to Edie at the end, I just wanted it to end.
    • 2/5
      This felt exhausting to read. Some of it was beautifully written but it was very unsavory and there wasn't really a conclusion. It sort of dragged on and nothing much happened.
    • 5/5
      the way this book is written is stunning. i was consistently captivated by the unique imagery and leilani’s very apparent craft. best book i’ve listened to in a looong time.
    • 4/5
      Beautifully written book about being a young woman trying to make her way through life
    • 5/5
      This book is to be savoured...it is like a complex five course meal that I couldn't figure our how such opposites could come together ...the choice of phrases elegant and brutal...I listened to it versus letting my eyes race over the pages...so grateful I had a voice not mine speaking "Luster".
    • 5/5
      Moving, intelligent, and well told ( a good and very well-chosen audio narrator, too). I was gripped by the young heroine and the story and audio-read the book almost in one fell swoop. An emerging writer whose work I’ll want to read more of.
    • 5/5
      Modern relationships described with beautiful writing skills. Love her writing!
    • 5/5
      I didn't love the plot (at all) but I definitely enjoyed her writing.