Book Review: Luster A Novel by Raven Leilani

I am not so far from my 20s, but they were definitely much different than some of the popular literary characters nowadays. To be more honest, although I am deeply grateful for not being any more in my 20s, I haven´t had at all the feeling of being wasted and failing at relationships and borderline desperate. Maybe in fact I have to do with characters belonging to a cultural context foreign to me?

Edie, the character of Luster by Raven Leilani, a much praised novel published in 2020, is one of those characters that no matter how much I am trying to sympathise with, I can´t. I tried, but in the end, she does and will never do belong to the group of people that will be part of my life. A failed painter living in a rat infested home, she hooks up with a man over a decade her senior, Eric, married and going through couple therapy. Their kind of relationship is supervised by Rebecca, his autopsist wife, which sends him bullet-points kind of directions to follow in their relationship. Actually, this autopsist aspect was the one and only that made my imagination go a bit wild, but unfortunately, it was only me, not the book. Edie is visiting a morgue with Rebecca but well, there is far from a noteworthy visit.

After a little bit into the relationship, Edie will be fired from her publishing job and ends up for a while sharing a room with Akila, a young girl that may be adopted by the couple. Edie is black in a white town and she longs to be loved and part of a familiar environment - both her parents are dead - but until the end of the story, when she seems to get back into her painting mood and the moment is beautifully described, with a detail for inner revival, I just listen and listen to the book, chapter after chapter, with no emotional attachment to anything was going on in the story. 

As in life, it´s part of the reading experience, to do not necessarily find any need for attachment in books or people that are not my cup of tea. Seriously, in real life, if any of my girlfriends would have hang around married men in their 40s using them part of their couple therapy, I would have do my best either to kidnap the said girlfriend from the story or to just run away from her. I don´t think that this is how capitalism will be ever conquered or dismissed. 

This year, I am already 11 years past my reading goal but none of my selection impressed me over 3 stars. Maybe I am going through a process during which my literary tastes are changed maybe I still haven´t found the right books. Search in process...

Rating: 2.5 stars