IMPORTANT: We will be meeting virtually via Zoom @ 11AM EST. Please email info@twentystoriesla.com for the Zoom meeting link!

This month (AUGUST 2020) we'll be discussing LUSTER by Raven Leilani. We'll talk about the novel's structure, our favorite passages, and what the author is trying to accomplish, among other things! Come meet new book friends!

ALL ARE WELCOME TO JOIN THE DISCUSSION. FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

* OUR FICTION BOOKCLUB MEETS THE LAST SUNDAY OF EVERY MONTH *

BUY THE BOOK online at twentystoriesla.com/fictionbooks

ABOUT LUSTER

AT A GLANCE:

“Exacting, hilarious, and deadly . . . A writer of exhilarating freedom and daring.” —Zadie Smith, Harper’s Bazaar

"Impossible to put down.” —Ling Ma, author of Severance

SYNOPSIS:

No one wants what no one wants.

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Raven Leilani’s work has been published in Granta, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, The Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. Leilani received her MFA from NYU and was an Axinn Foundation Writer-in-Residence. Luster is her first novel.

SEE YOU THERE! Questions? Email: info@twentystoriesla.com