Luster

American author Raven Leilani’s debut novel Luster documents the struggles of 23-year-old Edie, a Black woman battling the trauma of her past and its effect on her chaotic life in New York City. Published in 2020, Luster was the winner of the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Leilani is a graduate of New York University’s MFA program, where she studied with the acclaimed author Zadie Smith. Luster is written in the first-person point of view and seamlessly blends Edie’s recollections of her tumultuous past as a young Black woman in Upstate New York with her present attempts to navigate the dynamics of a complicated relationship with a White man who is twice her age. Through Edie’s journey, Leilani explores the complications of what it means to be human at the intersections of sex, love, death, gender, and race.

Plot Summary

Twenty-three-year-old Edie meets Eric, a 46-year-old White man in an open relationship. Sexually frustrated and longing for connection, Edie accompanies Eric to Six Flags for their first date. Though she is left unsatisfied, her date with Eric leads her to begin painting again after a two-year hiatus.

Edie works an unfulfilling job in the editorial department of a children’s publishing house.