“It’s not that I want exactly this, to have a husband or home security system that, for the length of our marriage, never goes off. It’s that there are gray, anonymous hours like this. Hours when I am desperate, when I am ravenous, when I know how a star becomes a void.”

Luster is about Edie, a female painter of 23 years old, who is nearly unemployed and dates abusive or toxic men. When she starts dating Eric, a white man of middle age with an open marriage, she wants to adopt his life which is so different than her own.

For some books you simply have to be in a certain mood. Luster is such a book. Because this book portrays the hard things of life. Working hard but earning nothing, racism and sexism, the harsh results of capitalism renting a appartement with health issues. But also illustrates about how a low self esteem, caused by childhood trauma, translates in future relationships. And all of this in wonderful, although maybe a little overused, prose. And that’s the reason I did like it, as the writing was immaculate, but I wasn’t in the right headspace to really appreciate it. This book was supposed to have humor, but I missed that, as such it felt very dark. It was saddening to see this young female, struggle so much with her self-image resulting in destructiveness. Maybe it was supposed to let me feel that, but because of it this was not the book for this moment.