You get to see past the curation, and so it’s not necessarily that they’re unlikable-they’re honest. I actually prefer that my characters-or any characters I’m watching on TV or reading about-I prefer they be unlikable because I think unlikable is often shorthand for getting to see the nitty-gritty interior of a woman’s mind. It’s funny, we're deep in that unlikable women moment, and I love it. It’s hard to ask an author about that because what if she says, “You mean you didn’t like my characters?” There’s been a discussion in the past few years about whether fictional characters, particularly women, should be likable. Leilani’s characters act in ways that often defy explanation, and that is part of what makes them so alive and so mesmerizing.” Leilani recently spoke about the novel from her apartment in Brooklyn, where she’s sheltering in place the conversation has been edited for length and clarity. As our starred review says, “The dynamics among the four of them keep shifting, an unstable ballet of race, sex, and power. Edie and Akila are Black, Eric and Rebecca are White Rebecca and Edie fascinate each other Edie and Eric have sex but can’t decide if they like each other and Akila needs a friend. 4), introduces a 23-year-old artist named Edie who loses her job in publishing and winds up moving in with her older lover, Eric his wife, Rebecca, an autopsist and their adopted preteen daughter, Akila, at their home in suburban New Jersey. Raven Leilani is a painter as well as a writer, and her riveting first novel, Luster(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Aug.
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