Luster
RAVEN LEILANI
(PICADOR, 240 PP, £14.99)
Tablet bookshop price £13.49 • tel 020 7799 4064

The generation gap has always existed, but the expression of it constantly changes. Old ways are discarded and mocked, privation gives way to affluence, war to peace (and back again), repression to freedom as one generation succeeds another. For a dissection of the phenomenon as it plays out today, look no further than Luster, the story of a young black woman’s attempts to carve a precarious niche in New York. 

Edie is quietly resentful of the older generation, but too shiftless to change things in her favour. She works aimlessly at a publisher’s and has artistic ambitions she does nothing to foster, beyond taking photos and trying to render them in paint. Everything seems too much effort, apart from vigorous, unrewarding sex, frequently with co-workers in nooks around the office. A long paragraph details her encounters: Mike in HR, Jake in IT, Hamish in contracts, Vlad from the mailroom, and so on and on. Unsurprisingly, the job doesn’t last long. Edie is informed by the other black girl in the office that only one of them can succeed, and it’s not going to be Edie.