RAVENLEILANI

continuing to feed our obsession with ‘messy’ women, here comes Raven (whose surname is Baptiste but who writes under her middle name, Leilani) with her brave, shocking, specific-yet-universal thrill of a novel, Luster.

Out this month (after huge success in the US and praise from Raven’s one-time teacher and mentor Zadie Smith), Luster sees 20-something Black New Yorker Edie start a relationship with 40-something white suburbanite Eric, who’s in an open marriage. Over the course of the novel, Edie becomes sucked into his family’s life, including that of his adopted Black daughter, 12-year-old Akila.

But, of course, the book is about a million other things too, including, as Raven explains, ‘A young Black woman who is trying to seize the right to make art as well as trying to seek intimacy. The most nutshell way to put it is it’s about desire and the kind of messy trajectory I think a lot of artists follow in pursuit of that art.’

Messiness presides. ‘I feel like my own life was as messy,’ says Raven. ‘You were finding your way to what’s meaningful to you and there’s a lot of trial and error involved. I wanted to be honest about the kind of frenzy of that – the way we often get it wrong in the pursuit of what’s right.’

It’s key to her depiction of sex, too – the one place that Edie can ‘lower her mask’, says Raven. ‘But also the awkward, sticky logistics of sex, I thought it was important not to pretty that up and, in being candid and precise in the way that works logistically, it makes more room for tenderness.’

In Edie’s relationship with Akila, though, things are different. ‘It was really important for me to have two young Black women in the same space and be a source of comfort for each other,’ says Raven. ‘This book is dark and brutal in parts and I needed there to be joy, especially where the Black women are concerned.’

Raven’s striking language has been hailed by many – a product of her writing the novel between various jobs. ‘As I was writing I was working full-time and going to school full-time and trying to make space to write. It’s a really unphotogenic endeavor,’ she says. ‘That’s a huge part of this book, the way it feels to try and carve out space when your bandwidth is taken up with how you eat, pay rent, pay your student debt. And the weirdness of trying to maintain that faith in yourself when the work is a totally private and solitary thing.’

Her faith justified, being a full-time novelist of such success is ‘a real dream and very surreal still’, she says. She’s not started on her second novel yet and instead is indulging her love of visual art. ‘I’ve been painting like a fiend, so I’m riding that wave,’ she says. Not too long though – we messy women need more.

‘Luster’ is out 21 January