A review by heyleigh05
Luster by Raven Leilani

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

**This review contains spoilers**

Luster is that misunderstood person in our lives that we have a hard time figuring out. Luster is messy, aloof, and simultaneously humorous and frustrating. I understand why people don’t like this book. Edie, the protagonist, is a hot mess. She’s self-destructive, she makes poor decisions, and it seems like she doesn’t respect herself. Luster tells the story of Edie, a 23-year-old black woman surviving in New York. She’s working a job she hates, living in a crappy apartment, and like most people she’s poor. Edie meets a white man named Eric, who’s in an “open marriage”, and they form a relationship. However, as Edie finds herself in unique circumstances, she moves into Eric’s house with his family and she becomes a de facto mentor to Eric and Rebecca’s adopted daughter, Akila. Luster describes Edie’s journey of self-actualization and how she navigates adulthood. 

Personally, I don’t really need to relate to character to like them or make the reading experience pleasurable. The characterization just has to make sense. If I can understand the character’s logic and intentions, then that’s good character development to me. I can understand why others don’t like Edie and think her unrelatable. As I said she’s a hot-mess and exhibits volatile behavior. However, women like Edie do exist, and Raven Leilani has created a space for us to explore the messy Black girl. After Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder, black women are portrayed and expected to be Olivia Popes and Annalise Keatings. We’re supposed to be superhuman, polished, and put together. But Edie represents the women and girls who are reckless, lost, and struggling. We know that plenty of “Edies” exist because projects like CTRL by SZA, Heaux Tales by Jazmine Sullivan, Insecure by Issa Rae, and High Fidelity, the Hulu Original starring Zoe Kravitz, resonate with people and they exist to tell a similar narrative. These projects all tell the stories of the messy, complicated black girl. As soon as I started reading Edie’s story, I immediately thought of Heaux Tales. Heaux Tales explores the complicatedness of relationships and the roles that Black women inhabit in these relationships. The narratives on that EP align closely with the things Edie feels and does. I instantly understood where Edie was coming from as a character. I also thought the album CTRL while reading this. CTRL discusses the messiness of relationships, wanting to be desired, and feeling lost. 20 Something could even be Edie’s theme song. I could clearly see the overlap in themes between these projects and Edie’s characterization. 

I appreciate that Raven Leilani reaffirms that it’s okay for Black girls to be messy and unstable. We don’t have to be superheroes and save the world. I watched an interview that Leilani did with Brit Bennett, and they mentioned that there’s a growing collection of stories that fall within the “dirt bag black girl” narrative. They are women and girls who don’t have their shit together and they are just trying to navigate adulthood. They’re impulsive, insecure, volatile, and they make bad decisions. They are still on the journey of understanding themselves. As one of her co-workers says, Edie has no self-control and she’s self-sabotaging. For Edie, her sexual encounters are exploitative and transactional. She uses her body to get things she wants and while that can be empowering it can also be degrading because then people only see you as a body that can offer something without empathizing with the person attached to it. I think that because Edie was raised without boundaries and discipline, she lives her life the same way: without boundaries. I think Edie looks for sexual partners who are authoritative and who have power over her because she didn’t have that authority when she was growing up. Edie’s use of sex is interesting because while she likes to control the circumstances, she also enacts a somewhat submissive role in the relationship. Edie both revels in isolation but also desires attention. She wants to be both noticed and unnoticed. She uses sex to fulfill her need to be desired, but she also refuses to get attached to anyone. Edie also deals with her own traumas from her childhood while also navigating external constructs like racism and patriarchy. Interestingly, I think the only things that Edie is assured about are her blackness and her body. She’s unapologetically Black and she baulks at the respectability confines her job tries to place her in. Edie also helps Akila navigate her blackness in a white household by teaching her how to take care of her hair and defending her when they have an altercation with the cops. Edie is also confident in her body because she knows that its attractive and that she can use it to get what she wants. However, the other aspects of Edie’s identity, I think she feels insecure about. She’s uncertain about her passion and her career. Edie struggles with her art throughout the novel. Beyond being a Black woman, she struggles to define who she is. 

 I think part of the reason Edie is attracted to Eric is because of his seeming unattainability. Eric is twice her age, he has a career, a family, and he has niche interests/hobbies. She’s attracted to his experience, to the idea that he’s lived more life. Edie is also set up to be a foil to Eric’s wife, Rebecca. Rebecca is a white woman with an established career, she’s the matriarch of the family, she’s in control, and she’s meticulous. Rebecca is the slim to Edie’s curves; she’s the white to Edie’s Black; she’s premeditated to Edie’s impulsive. She’s seemingly the direct opposite of Edie and I think Edie is intrigued by that. Despite being in a relationship with Eric, Edie’s relationship with Rebecca eventually supersedes her relationship Eric. Edie and Rebecca share a bond that’s built on mutual respect. Edie learns that Rebecca’s tidiness and togetherness is a façade, and she has more layers than she lets on. Rebecca is a woman who sacrificed her wants and desires to fulfill the role of a wife and mother. It’s not hard to believe that Rebecca may have been like Edie when she was younger but as she grew older, she had to face her responsibilities. Edie grows to respect Rebecca more than she does Eric. Rebecca is brutally honest and reliable, and she’s shown to be the true person holding the family together. Overtime Edie sees that Eric is immature, selfish, and dull, not the person that she was initially attracted to. 

I’d also like to quickly touch on the “open marriage” situation between Eric and Rebecca. Eric tells Edie that he and his wife are in an open marriage, but Rebecca has written rules and conditions that must be followed. This arrangement reminded of a video I watched by Kat Blaque titled, “It’s Okay to Say no to Polyamory”. It’s clear in the novel that Eric wanted to pursue different women and he used polyamory as an excuse to convince Rebecca to allow it. Based on Rebecca’s rules and other things she says, you can tell that she was not fully comfortable with an open marriage and this was very much something that Eric wanted. In Kat Blaque’s she discusses this exact scenario in which middle-aged men use polyamory to pursue younger women. They often convince their wives that monogamy is old-fashioned, and they say that if you’re not polyamorous then you’re not being open-minded and accepting. This is probably how Eric convinced Rebecca to get on board. Interestingly, we see that it’s only Eric who is taking advantage of their open marriage policy whereas Rebecca remains monogamous to Eric. 

There’s a lot more that I can say about this novel and I probably will later. Hopefully, I clearly got across my ideas about this novel. I feel like this novel was largely a character study rather than a dramatic plot-driven novel. The plot builds slowly, and we don’t really reach the climax until about the last 40 pages of the novel. Edie is an interesting character in her own right. You could read this book several times to fully understand her character. But Rebecca and Akila are also compelling characters. Rebecca is aloof and complex, and Akila is a pre-teen who has also experienced trauma from a young age. I understand why people don’t like this book, but I think that Luster is misunderstood. It’s supposed to messy and aloof and confusing because that’s how people are and that’s how life is. I don’t relate to Edie in a lot of ways, but I can relate to the feeling of being 20-something and feeling anxious about what you’re going to do with your life. I get this feeling that I’m wasting away my twenties and feeling like I haven’t really lived. That aspect of Edie’s life, working menial jobs, exploring your hobbies, and trying to find meaning in life, those are the relatable aspects of the novel for me and I appreciate it. I look forward to Raven Leilani’s future work! 
Link to Raven Leilani interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc3vsqLXsbU