Luster A Novel

<p><b>A <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR</b><br><b>A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, <i>O Magazine, Vanity Fair</i>, <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, <i>Glamour</i>, Shondaland, <i>The New York Times Book Review</i>, <i>Boston Globe</i>, <i>Buzzfeed</i>, <i>Kirkus</i>, <i>Time</i>, <i>Good Housekeeping</i>, <i>InStyle</i>, <i>The Guardian</i>, <i>Literary Hub</i>, <i>Electric Literature</i>, <i>Self</i>, The New York Public Library, <i>Town & Country</i>, <i>Wired</i>, Boston.com, <i>Happy Mag</i>, <i>New Statesman</i>, <i>Vox</i>, <i>Shelf Awareness</i>,<i> Chatelaine, The Undefeated</i>, <i>Apartment Therapy</i>, <i>Brooklyn Based</i>, <i>The End of the World Review</i>, <i>Exile in Bookville, Lit Reactor, BookPage, i-D</i></b><br><b>A FAVORITE BOOK OF THE YEAR: <i>The New Yorker</i>, Barack Obama<br>A BEST BOOK FOR HOLIDAY GIFTS: <i>AV Club</i>, <i>Chicago Tribune</i>, <i>New York Magazine/The Strategist, The Rumpus</i></b><br><br><b>WINNER of the NBCC John Leonard Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award</b><br><br><b>AN INSTANT </b><i><b>NEW YORK TIMES</b></i><b> BESTSELLER </b><br><b>NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER * </b><b><i>LOS ANGELES TIMES</i> BESTSELLER * <i>WASHINGTON POST </i>BESTSELLER</b><br><br><b>"So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or melt into a languorous drip; plot suddenly, wildly flying forward like a bike down a hill." —Jazmine Hughes, <i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br><br><b>“An irreverent intergenerational tale of race and class that’s blisteringly smart and fan-yourself sexy.” —Michelle Hart<i>, O: The Oprah Magazine</i></b><br><br><i>No one wants what no one wants.</i><br>And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?<br><br>Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties<b>—</b>sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage<b>—</b>with <i>rules</i>.<br><br>As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home—though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.<br><br>Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s <i>Luster </i>is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life—her hunger, her anger—in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.</p>