Luster

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Leilani, Raven, Adult Book / Fiction / General / Leilani, Raven
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Pittsfield Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Leilani, Raven	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Leilani, Raven	4-week checkout	Due 05-13-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Leilani, Raven	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Leilani, Raven	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Leilani, Raven	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Leilani, Raven	4-week checkout	Due 05-05-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Leilani, Raven	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Leilani, Raven	4-week checkout	Due 05-08-2024

"Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties--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--with rules. 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. Luster 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 description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way."--Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Booklist Review
Summary / Annotation
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Just so odd submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 15, 2022, 10:48pm What an utterly odd story. I don’t mind that it’s about a non-primary relationship to a couple in an open marriage, although it is not a healthy open marriage, and so is wildly not what open marriage is really about. I mind very much that there is BDSM but without the real safety and conversations that make BDSM “safe, sane, and consensual,” which is what BDSM is about. I mind that the power dynamics between the two main characters are wildly out of whack (age, finances, race, stability, employment, desire,… pretty much everything). So we’re 0/3 in depicting anything reasonable or healthy in the world.

And is that maybe the point? I don’t know. Edie is a mass of contradictions, lost in the world and hard to read/ read about. But the writing is occasionally eloquent and brilliant, bringing me to read passages out loud to my partner. Those were mostly the main character’s observations about race, which were on point, insightful, and sharp. I *loved* what she saw and reflected. More of that, please!

Listened to this one submitted by bcartm01 on June 21, 2022, 8:33pm Listened to this book on audiobook rather than reading it. I agree with the previous review in that there was an obvious unfair power dynamic between the main character and her love interest. I also wish the author would have expanded more on the relationship between the main character and the wife. That sort of left me hanging. All in all I did enjoy it.

Embrace this book! submitted by chdoyle on June 12, 2023, 11:09am This book is not a demonstration of ideal, non-traditional relationships, nor does it pretend to be. This book is an exploration of everything that makes real relationships complicated, heartbreaking, and fulfilling: connection, identity, power, desire. Leilani draws her readers into those corners, those nuances, masterfully. The idea of a mistress moving in with her lover's family seems, on the surface, sordid. But this book pushes deeper than that. It's a real look into literal and figurative closeness - intimacy. These characters may make decisions we *think* we would never make; but the motives driving those decisions - desire, desperation, curiosity - aren't foreign to any of us. Approach this book with curiosity and compassion, dispatch any judgements or moral highground, and you will find yourself softened and enlightened by Leilani's work.