Luster by Raven Leilani

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 4, 2020

There is an appealing randomness to Luster, yet every scene in this story of a 23-year-old woman is purposeful. After Edie loses her job as an editorial coordinator for the children’s division of a book publisher, she does food delivery on her bicycle as part of the on-demand economy, joining the other “delivery boys and girls who jet into traffic with fried rice and no reason to live.” She later fills her days with whatever comes along, culminating in a trip to a comic convention that she attends as a black Princess Leia. Along the way Edie observes her environment, frets about her intestines, and questions her choices. A plot that seems to be haphazard and whimsical evolves into a serious story about a black woman who is trying to find a path that will take her beyond condescension and judgment to a destination of her own design.

While still employed, Edie begins having an affair with a middle-aged man who impresses her because he can adequately navigate a wine list. Edie has had flings with pretty much everyone in her office, regardless of gender — she regards opportunities to have sex as the best part of her job — which accounts for her eventual separation from her employment. Edie is sure men lose interest in her when she talks and perhaps that is the way of men, but Edie is so stuffed with ideas that it is difficult to believe anyone would not be delighted to hear her thoughts.

The affair is with a married man named Eric. They meet through an app. Edie worries about their first meeting in broad daylight, the one “where you see him seeing you, deciding in this split second whether any future cunnilingus will be enthusiastic or perfunctory.” Edie is disappointed that Eric takes so long to take her to bed and is thereafter disappointed that he spends so much time traveling on business or doing whatever he does with his wife.

Edie drops into Eric’s home uninvited — in fact, she walks into the house to have a look around, thinking it is empty — and ends up attending Eric’s anniversary party with his wife Rebecca and adopted daughter Akila. Eric and Rebecca are white; Akila is black. Rebecca decides for reasons of her own that she should form a relationship of some sort with Edie, although not exactly a friendship. Rebecca expects Akila to bond with Edie and wants Edie to play the role of “Trusty Black Spirit Guide” in exactly the way Rebecca thinks it should be played, but Akila is thirteen and not about to bond with any adult, particularly not one who has seen her father’s penis.

When Edie loses her job and apartment, Rebecca improbably invites her to move into the guest room. For much of the novel, Edie is trying to figure out how to fit in with the man she sometimes shags, his wife, and the tweener who seems to despise her. At the same time, Edie is painting. Her works are undistinguished, but as she thinks about her life and the circumstances of those around her, she slowly develops a technique that brings an emotional honesty into her creations.

Perhaps Edie is a surrogate for Raven Leilani, at least in the sense that Leilani has certainly learned the importance of taking a hard and honest look at life and to let her critical observations inform her writing. When Edie says about her job, “if a person come to rote work with the expectation that she will be demeaned, she can bypass the pitfalls of hope and redirect all that energy into being a merciless drone” — she is speaking a truth that most people will recognize.

Racism is a central theme that Leilani tackles with subtlety. Before she is sacked, Edie works with a black woman who is enviably better than Edie at being “black and dogged and inoffensive.” Edie’s co-worker criticizes Edie for thinking that by being “slack” and expressing “no impulse control you’re like, black power. Sticking it to the white man or whatever. But you’re just exactly what they expect.” In the other woman’s view, Edie isn’t allowed to be herself, because in a white world, being herself isn’t good enough. Which is, in itself, a form of racism. Edie’s sharp observations of the role black women are expected to play in a business world dominated by white males — particularly white men who are trying to be politically correct and cluelessly botching it — would make Luster worthwhile even if the novel had nothing else to offer.

The behavior of men toward women is another theme. In the dark, “all the wholly unoriginal, too generous things men are prone to saying before they come sound startling and true.” Then they collect their pants and “there is a world beyond the door with its traffic and measles and no room for these heady, optimistic words.” Men are there and then they are not. “I have learned not to be surprised by a man’s sudden withdrawal,” Edie says.

Luster might be seen as a coming of age novel because, while Edie may seem aimless, she begins to understand what is important to her life by the novel’s end. The sentences quoted in this review provide a glimpse of how Leilani focuses so precisely on the world that Edie inhabits, how eloquently she conveys Edie’s thoughts. The novel is wickedly smart, sly, and engrossing. Leilani’s novel may be a debut, but it is written in the assured voice of a seasoned writer who knows exactly what she wants to say.

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