She allows Eric to hit her after she sneaks into his house. She ignores basic hygiene and uses her bathing suit as underwear for days instead of doing laundry. It is almost.' Her actions reflect this weariness: She cuts herself with a sword after being fired. She feel she's 'good, but not good enough, which is worse than simply being bad. She hovers above situations, recognizing that what she's doing is wrong, but never doing anything to correct herself. Leilani understands ennui well, and Edie is full of it. I chased them down the hall with a bottle of Listerine, saying, I can be a beach read, I can get rid of all these clauses, please, I'll just revise. I dove for their legs as they tried to leave my house. 'I'm an open book,' I say, thinking of all the men who have found it illegible. While trying to find a new place and a new job, Edie develops a friendly relationship with her lover's spouse and with their adopted daughter, a young Black woman named Akila. When her behavior at work catches up to her and she loses her job, Edie ends up in Eric's home again – only this time, Rebecca has invited her in. Also, Eric's wife, Rebecca, has a set of strict rules for them Edie breaks one when she sneaks into Eric's house, and she gets caught. For starters, Eric is white and Edie is Black. They start dating, but things get complicated. Then she meets Eric, an older married man in an open relationship who works as a digital archivist. She's also making bad choices, watching porn at work, and sleeping with a few coworkers. Raven Leilani's Luster belongs to this select group.Įdie is in her 20s, working an admin job in a publishing company, and sharing a roach infested apartment in Bushwick. Luckily, sometimes a book comes along that makes me cringe for all the right reasons. You know, books where suspension of disbelief refuses to stay even if you hold it at gunpoint, stories of whitewashed cities where everyone is beautiful, stories with dialogue so eloquent it sounds like Martin Luther King, Jr. Books that make me cringe are usually bad.

Luster by Raven Leilani