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Luster

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Luster

Written by: Raven Leilani
Narrated by: Ariel Blake
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Buy Now for $27.97

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About this listen

 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Winner of the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize for Best First Book
Winner of the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction
Winner of the 2021 Dylan Thomas Prize
Finalist for the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel
Longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
Longlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Named Best Book of the Year by O: the Oprah Magazine, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Town and Country, Amazon, Indigo, NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, Kirkus Reviews, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping


Sharp, comic, disruptive, and tender, Luster sees a young Black woman fall into art and someone else's open marriage.

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'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 who young Akila knows.
Razor-sharp, darkly comic, sexually charged, socially disruptive, Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make 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. Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Women's Fiction Marriage
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Loved this story and the images it evokes of an artist who seems a bit lost in life and finds shelter within a reluctant family. Characters reveal their needs cautiously, bonds form unexpectedly. Often I felt like I was reading a graphic novel because of how precise and evocative descriptions were.
I've recommended this novel to many people.

Ordinary life fragments become riveting

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I am going to be looking for more books by the author… This book was simply amazing! I am technically an SDA I wonder if this made the book more interesting for me

Amazing

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Ms. Leilani is obviously a brilliant writer, but the characters are all so detached and unemotional that the book has a way of leaving the reader with an unsettling emptiness. But perhaps that was the point?

Absolutely brilliant but somehow hollow

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I'm reading a physical copy while listening, and the audiobook skips the entire second half of Chapter 7, which would be highly confusing for anyone just following the audiobook. Will be returning the audiobook, but absolutely loved the story and narration.

Great Book but the Audiobook Skips Large Sections

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witty rivetting suspenseful poetic charming carnal generous & tragicomic, charisma oozing from a page as from a painting. gritty and AUTHENTICALLY millenial.

it glitters

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