Luster by Raven Leilani review: disarming, funny and human - no wonder Barack Obama is a fan

It is brave of Barack Obama to have picked Luster as one of his favourite books of last year. Raven Leilani’s debut novel, which came out in 2020 in the United States, is a full throttle, explicit read, featuring sadomasochism and masturbation.  

When we meet the narrator, 23-year-old Edie, she is having phone sex in her open plan office with a married man she met on an app. No detail is spared in the descriptions of the sex; there are shades of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s complaint, told from an African American woman’s point of view.  

Edie has no shame, great breasts and a very low salary, but also trouble making friends because she talks too explicitly about her ovaries. Reading her intimate descriptions of bodily functions, both during sex and when she writes about her IBS feels almost voyeuristic. 

Leilani’s confessional style is disarming and funny, and has earned the book widespread praise. As well as the former US President, her fans include Zadie Smith, who taught Leilani creative writing and called this book "exacting, hilarious and deadly". 

The main thrust of the plot is a timeless story of adultery. Edie falls for Eric, a married man in his forties who woos her by correcting her grammar and has never slept with a black woman before. The twist comes when Edie ends up making friends with Eric’s wife, Rebecca and moving in with the family in the suburbs. Rebecca and Eric have an adopted daughter called Akila, who is the only black girl in the neighbourhood, and Edie says she sees herself as the teenager’s “trusty black spirit guide”.

Luster ticks a lot of publishing trend boxes – covering the experience of a female millennial African American - but it would be simplistic to say that this defines it.  

What makes it so successful is the way that Edie cuts to the quick in her observations, both making you laugh and empathise with her.  She is acutely aware of how her skin colour affects her life. She works in publishing - which feels pointed, given the extent to which the BLM movement focussed on the whiteness of the industry last year. 

Edie is deliberately unfriendly to the other black girl in the office, she says they "see each other's hunger". She finds her own work – fact checking children’s books – dull, and has no friends at work or elsewhere.

Leilani writes in the present tense, which compounds the sense that Edie has not yet processed her past. She fills in the blanks where she needs to – her mother was an alcoholic who “found Jesus and got clean”, obsessed over her weight and committed suicide, her father was a former naval officer who pretended he was religious and cheated on her mother, sleeping with other women in the family home. Edie had an abortion at 16 and pretends not to care, saying she “recalls it fondly” but she mentions it so much that you wonder how comfortable with it she really is.

Mirrors feature heavily. Edie says their presence can complicate matters – she tries to convince herself she is a “normal human being” until she sees them. She finds peace by painting but, revealingly, can’t do a self-portrait.