Brillo
Raven Leilani, Laura Ibáñez
3.58 · 35 ratings · Published: 04 Aug 2020
And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?
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.
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.
Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster 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.
- romance 4
- contemporary 3
- literary fiction 3
- protagonists of colour 3
- coming of age 3
- drama 2
- realistic 2
- family 2
- city/urban 2
- lgbtq+ 2
- dark 1
- funny 1
- female mc 1
- grief 1
- bildungsroman 1
- summer 1
- black mc 1
- Add topics
- format - reader age
- audiobook 3
- book 1
- adult fiction 1
- content warnings
- racism 2
- mental illness 2