Luster: A Novel

"One debut that has managed to cut through the noise is Raven Leilani’s Luster. Out now in the US and Canada (but not available in the UK until January), this novel has been endorsed by the likes of Zadie Smith, Brit Bennett and Ling Ma, and highlighted as one of the most anticipated new novels of fall 2020 by everywhere from Vogue to Lithub. It’s about a young black woman working in publishing who begins an affair with a white man in an open marriage—then later comes to live with the couple and their adopted daughter in their family home. The book is an ultra-self-conscious interrogation of power balances, race, loneliness and non-monogamous relationships, and if that sounds intriguing you may be keen to read an excerpt published over at The Cut. Another first novel making waves is Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain ; only just out in the UK, it was published to enormous acclaim across the Atlantic in the spring and has already been longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. Stuart, a Glaswegian living in New York, has written a bleakly beautiful novel of an alcoholic mother and her son struggling to get by in the brutal, hyper-masculine culture of 1980s Glasgow. It will break your heart. And an honourable mention to Gabriel Krauze’s searing biographical novel of gang violence Who They Was – longlisted for the Booker Prize ahead of its UK publication in September, and still apparently in search of an American publisher which I hope will be resolved ASAP."