Luster

Edie is 23 and embarking on a probably ill-advised date with a middle-aged and married man who decides they'll meet at Six Flags. The writing is sharp and funny. Edie is a bit of a mess, a lowly functionary at a publishing company living in a roach infested apartment and making horrible choices, branding herself the “office slut.” And I get stopped up short, suddenly this starts reading like she's being written by Eric the affluent digital archivist. Like the prose has suddenly been infected by the same white middle aged men it seemed ready to lampoon, and the sharp wit of the story is suddenly blunted and mired in MFA workshopping. Of course Edie is into some casual, sometimes brutal sex with a controlling and aloof older man - but she's also an artist!

And Rebecca the wife is some weird amalgam, thrashing topless in mosh pits and excavating bodies in the morgue, she feels less like a person and more an interesting idea. Fine with her husband's extramarital affairs while raising an adopted black girl, she's what the manic pixie dream girl becomes after 20 years of marriage, countless miscarriages and the numbing comfort of wealth.

So maybe all these sharp edges and the full on dumpster fire of choices Edie continues to make in increasingly improbable scenarios is speaking to some millennial angst that I can't quite tap into. Still, can't wait to see what Raven Leilani has in store next because the writing, when it isn't contorting itself to fit the convoluted meanderings of the story, is incredible.