Luster A Novel Raven Leilani by Raven Leilani 9780374194321, 0374194327 instant download after payment.

"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, The New York Times Book Review 

Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties — sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, and making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She's also, secretly, haltingly figuring her way into life as an artist. 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 falling into Eric's family life, his home. She becomes a hesitant friend to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie is the only black woman young Akila may know. 

"Brilliant in terms of voice, Luster is equally strong on plot and structure. In her leavening of cynicism with hope, Raven Leilani writes as if she were three books wise, at least. I closed Luster feeling a little more cynical than when I’d opened it – but I loved it nonetheless."  -  Tiphane Yanque, The Times Literary Supplement

Razor sharp, darkly comic, sexually charged, and socially disruptive, Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make her sense of her life 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.