Luster
Luster by Raven Leilani
Reviewed by Jess
📙📙📙
I think I’m probably one of those readers that does not want a hyped book to pass me by! It doesn’t always feel like a genuine way to compile my reading lists but here we are - guilty as charged! I was excited to read Raven Leilani’s debut and I have to say, overall I was not disappointed.
Edie, the protagonist, is a difficult lead character to follow. She has clearly suffered trauma upon trauma and carries an emotional burden twice her size as she goes about life. In the beginning I found her almost distant and unattached. She loses her job, makes very bad choices with men, and somehow ends up living in the family home of the married man she’s seeing with his wife and adopted black daughter. It seemed almost a little too farfetched to be real and I had a hard time connecting with what was going on, the role Edie played with the daughter Akila too convenient, and Eric seeming more and more like a pathetic man.
Strangely, her time spent in that house, probably because she wasn’t thinking about men or her trauma alone, seems almost like rehab for Edie and she finally became a real person to me. The harrowing final chapter is raw and redemptive, and even though she was still struggling with moving on and finding some independence I couldn’t help but feel positive that she was going to get there anyway. Rebecca was my favourite thing about this book! She felt like a puzzle I was constantly trying to solve and was the character that kept me reading to see where she would go next.
There is absolutely no denying that Leilani’s writing is masterful. Her wordplay is glorious, in particular how she describes New York and Comic-Con is so vivid and real it was truly amazing. It’s clearly an important book, and I can’t wait to read more from Raven Leilani, a real voice on being a marginalised young woman in society, particularly on being black in America. But I wonder if in the rush to say these important things, the story got left behind somewhat. I would definitely recommend it, maybe just not fast tracked to the top of your pile.
