Luster by Raven Leilani

 Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

My wife and I have an annual tradition of going through the NPR book recommendations and finding a few we want to read. While we rarely end up reading the same books, it is fun to read through the descriptions and snark about the ones that are definitely not our thing, and make lists of ones that might be. 

 

For me, I try every year to find at least one book that is a stretch compared to my usual reading. Not something genre exactly, but something not aimed at my demographic and that I might hate. Because you never know. 

 

Luster is one of those books. And, I actually liked it, even though it is definitely not the sort of book I would gravitate toward. 

 

The book is a bit dark, and the humor (of which there is plenty) is really dark. The ending is ambiguous, and, more than anything, is an end of the particular episode for the protagonist, which is just a few months of her life. 

 

Edie, a 20-something African American woman, is hardly the most sympathetic character. She makes terrible choices when it comes to sex - sleeping around with people at work, some of who can (and eventually do) get her fired, cutting her hand on a sword and bleeding on the office floor, getting pregnant at the worst time, sabotaging her own job interviews. 

 

And one more that is the central event of the book: showing up at her lover’s house and getting discovered by his wife. 

 

But before that, I should back up. Edie ends up as a paramour to Eric, an upper-middle class man in an open marriage. (At least, that’s what he says, although the actions of the characters seem to make this somewhat more murky.) There are rules about the relationship, and his wife Rebecca supposedly knows about Edie. 

 

Eric breaks the rules, though, when he takes Edie home with him while Rebecca is at work. (As a medical examiner for the coroner's office, of all things.) Later, Edie comes to his home without his knowledge, and runs into Rebecca, who figures out who she is. 

 

But there is more: After Edie leaves, and loses her job, she is invited to live with Eric and Rebecca - but it is Rebecca who gives the invite, without telling Eric. 

 

And one more thing: Eric and Rebecca have a tween foster daughter, who is also black, Akila, who they flounder in raising like any naive white couple would. So, on another level, Edie is useful to them.

 

I won’t spoil any more of what goes on, except to say that if you expect a torrid lesbian affair, you will be disappointed. While there is sex between Edie and Eric, it isn’t particularly sexy, and in fact serves the function of furthering the dark and uncomfortable dynamics that exist between the characters. 

 

For some reason or another, polyamory has become trendy with the media these days - my own cynical theory is that aging middle-class journalists with boring sex lives find it titillating the way they found Hollywood romantic shenanigans so fascinating when I was a kid. But in this book, it isn’t a trend thing - the plot device serves the characters and the author’s exploration of power dynamics related to class and race. 

 

I would also say that this book hardly makes polyamory or an open marriage sound appealing. The whole setup feels a lot like the more “traditional” version: “guy with money finds a hot young mistress, and abuses the power differential.” 

 

But there is so much more going on than sex in this book. In a lot of ways, Eric is the least interesting character, and the author leaves him as more of an outline than a full emotional participant. Far more interesting is the dynamic between Edie and Rebecca, and their relationship which defies categorization. One can perhaps sense some erotic frisson, but it is so far below the surface that it has to be felt rather than seen. 

 

 The interaction between Akila and Edie is also quite interesting, and believable. Don’t expect a warm, mushy, happy ending - this one is what you might expect when an angsty 13 year old who has been through a lot of trauma is involved. 

 

For me, I think the best part of the book is the way the author carefully avoids anything tidy. Everything is a mess, and there are no answers. Because of this, even though I can’t imagine myself as any of the characters, and the situations are on the ragged edge of over-the-top, they feel real and believable. 

 

I’ll also warn my fellow Gen-X sorts that this book is definitely Millennial. Expect a certain level of snark, and a refusal to make older folks feel cozy and satisfied. 

 

As usual, there are some great lines worth quoting. I love this one, from the description of the first in-person meeting of Edie and Eric, after they have had enough alcohol to loosen up a bit. 

 

It gets us loose enough to talk about politics, but as he talks, I hold my breath. I know we are in agreement on the most general, least controversial ideological points - women are people, racism is bad, Florida will be underwater in fifty years - but there is still ample time for him to bring up how much he enjoyed Atlas Shrugged. Even with good men, you are always waiting for the surprise. 

 

Frustratingly for me, I find it isn’t universal to agree on those three points - with too many of my former friends and family on the right wing, all of these are debatable. But yes, the Atlas Shrugged line is gold. 

 

One recurring issue is Edie’s compulsion to accept violence from her partners. This is profoundly uncomfortable, and is meant to be. It is clearly rooted in her own trauma - her abandonment by her veteran father who suffered from PTSD, her mother’s addiction and suicide, her abortion as a teen. There is also this line:

 

I didn’t tell him I was a virgin because I could not bear to be treated tenderly. I didn’t want him to be careful. So when it hurt and I was too proud to say stop and so said more, I believed, like a Catholic or a Tortured Artist, that the merit of a commitment correlates directly to the pain you endure in its pursuit. 

 

Near the end of the book, there is a correspondingly devastating assessment of Edie’s relationship with Eric. 

 

He is the most obvious thing that has ever happened to me, and all around the city it is happening to other silly, half-formed women excited by men who’ve simply met the prerequisite of living a little more life, a terribly unspecial thing that is just what happens when you keep on getting up and brushing your teeth and going to work and ignoring the whisper that comes to you at night and tells you it would be easier to be dead. So, sure, an older man is a wonder because he has paid thirty-eight years of Con Ed bills and suffered food poisoning and seen the climate reports and still not killed himself, but somehow, after being a woman for twenty-three years, after the ovarian torsion and student loans and newfangled Nazis in button-downs, I too am still alive, and actually this is the more remarkable feat. Instead, I let myself be awed by his middling command of the wine list. 

 

Throughout the book, there are brief flashbacks to Edie’s family stories, from her ancestors in the Caribbean to her immediate family. The way these are told are pithy and often hilarious, in a really dark way. For example:

 

That is to say, Granddad disappeared. My mother had as good a childhood as one can have with ten brothers and sisters, sleeping three to a bunk, ushering a collection of feral alley cats into hidey-holes Grandma could not hope to find, one link in a massive West Indian brood that year by year was proving to take after my grandfather’s side, meaning they were prone to disastrous dalliances with the arts and the things that make the fiscal wasteland of the arts worth the risk - the sex and drugs. 

 

I also want to mention a line about the complicated relationship between Edie and Rebecca, a conversation which takes place after Edie watches Rebecca dissect a cadaver at work, and Rebecca mentions Akila. 

 

[I]n this moment it becomes clear to me that despite this evening-long conspiracy, she is moving toward her most natural conclusion, which is to engage me not as a person who has just watched her dissect a man, but as a person who is black, and who is, because of that, available for her support. 

 

One final mention is that there is a scene that involves music by Arvo Pärt. In a scene involving raw eggs and tomatoes crushed with bare feet - don’t ask - you probably don’t want to think about it too much. Which was definitely unexpected, because who on earth actually picks that composer to put in a book? I mean, I’m a serious classical music nerd, so I know who he is, but that’s a risk for a wider audience. Leilani gives no explanation either. 

 

That said, I do like Pärt’s compositions, so it was a fun easter egg for me. I recommend listening to his tribute to Gustave Eiffel, which I saw the LA Phil perform a couple years back. 

 

There are other references throughout the book that Leilani simply drops, expecting the reader to either know about, or to look up. These range from Eric’s esoteric taste in music to the video games and anime that Akila loves. For Edie, it is easy to see that she is in a bit over her head with both of these, as she is with Rebecca’s very white bougie tastes. Perhaps the cultural references are made the way they are to reflect this disorientation. 

 

Overall, I thought the book was well written and definitely unusual. Unlike some modern novels I have read, I felt that it wasn’t unfocused or flabby - it was a tight narrative that covered a lot of ground without getting sidetracked. It wasn’t preachy, although it could have been. The plot served the vision, rather than the other way around. 

 

I also love that this is a book, by a black author, at risk for being pigeonholed into “race genre,” which defiantly asserts the right to be messy, to be flawed, to be imperfect, to be human in every respect. It doesn’t care whether a middle-aged white guy (who is probably more like Eric than I prefer to contemplate) likes it or likes its characters. 

 

This is Leilani’s first novel, and I am intrigued to see where she goes next in her career. Luster was not my usual sort of read, but I am glad a gave it a shot - it’s worth checking out.