A young black artist falls into an affair with a man in an open marriage before gradually befriending his wife and adopted daughter against a backdrop of dynamic racial politics. A first novel. 100,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)
"Sharp, comic, disruptive, tender, Raven Leilani's debut novel, Luster, sees a young black woman fall into art and someone else's open marriage"-- - (Baker & Taylor)
<p><b>AN INSTANT <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER</b><br><b>A <i>New York Times </i>Notable Book of the Year</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>One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 </b><br><b>A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, <i>The New York Times Book Review</i>, <i>O Magazine</i>, <i>Vanity Fair</i>,<i> Los Angeles Times</i>, <i>Glamour</i>, Shondaland, <i>Boston Globe</i>, and many more!</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><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—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.<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.<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></p> - (McMillan Palgrave)