Luster by Raven Leilani

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 4, 2020

There is an appealing randomness to Luster, yet every scene in this story of a 23-year-old woman is purposeful. After Edie loses her job as an editorial coordinator for the children’s division of a book publisher, she does food delivery on her bicycle as part of the on-demand economy, joining the other “delivery boys and girls who jet into traffic with fried rice and no reason to live.” She later fills her days with whatever comes along, culminating in a trip to a comic convention that she attends as a black Princess Leia. Along the way Edie observes her environment, frets about her intestines, and questions her choices. A plot that seems to be haphazard and whimsical evolves into a serious story about a black woman who is trying to find a path that will take her beyond condescension and judgment to a destination of her own design.

While still employed, Edie begins having an affair with a middle-aged man who impresses her because he can adequately navigate a wine list. Edie has had flings with pretty much everyone in her office, regardless of gender — she regards opportunities to have sex as the best part of her job — which accounts for her eventual separation from her employment. Edie is sure men lose interest in her when she talks and perhaps that is the way of men, but Edie is so stuffed with ideas that it is difficult to believe anyone would not be delighted to hear her thoughts.

The affair is with a married man named Eric. They meet through an app. Edie worries about their first meeting in broad daylight, the one “where you see him seeing you, deciding in this split second whether any future cunnilingus will be enthusiastic or perfunctory.” Edie is disappointed that Eric takes so long to take her to bed and is thereafter disappointed that he spends so much time traveling on business or doing whatever he does with his wife.

Edie drops into Eric’s home uninvited — in fact, she walks into the house to have a look around, thinking it is empty — and ends up attending Eric’s anniversary party with his wife Rebecca and adopted daughter Akila. Eric and Rebecca are white; Akila is black. Rebecca decides for reasons of her own that she should form a relationship of some sort with Edie, although not exactly a friendship. Rebecca expects Akila to bond with Edie and wants Edie to play the role of “Trusty Black Spirit Guide” in exactly the way Rebecca thinks it should be played, but Akila is thirteen and not about to bond with any adult, particularly not one who has seen her father’s penis.

When Edie loses her job and apartment, Rebecca improbably invites her to move into the guest room. For much of the novel, Edie is trying to figure out how to fit in with the man she sometimes shags, his wife, and the tweener who seems to despise her. At the same time, Edie is painting. Her works are undistinguished, but as she thinks about her life and the circumstances of those around her, she slowly develops a technique that brings an emotional honesty into her creations.

Perhaps Edie is a surrogate for Raven Leilani, at least in the sense that Leilani has certainly learned the importance of taking a hard and honest look at life and to let her critical observations inform her writing. When Edie says about her job, “if a person come to rote work with the expectation that she will be demeaned, she can bypass the pitfalls of hope and redirect all that energy into being a merciless drone” — she is speaking a truth that most people will recognize.

Racism is a central theme that Leilani tackles with subtlety. Before she is sacked, Edie works with a black woman who is enviably better than Edie at being “black and dogged and inoffensive.” Edie’s co-worker criticizes Edie for thinking that by being “slack” and expressing “no impulse control you’re like, black power. Sticking it to the white man or whatever. But you’re just exactly what they expect.” In the other woman’s view, Edie isn’t allowed to be herself, because in a white world, being herself isn’t good enough. Which is, in itself, a form of racism. Edie’s sharp observations of the role black women are expected to play in a business world dominated by white males — particularly white men who are trying to be politically correct and cluelessly botching it — would make Luster worthwhile even if the novel had nothing else to offer.

The behavior of men toward women is another theme. In the dark, “all the wholly unoriginal, too generous things men are prone to saying before they come sound startling and true.” Then they collect their pants and “there is a world beyond the door with its traffic and measles and no room for these heady, optimistic words.” Men are there and then they are not. “I have learned not to be surprised by a man’s sudden withdrawal,” Edie says.

Luster might be seen as a coming of age novel because, while Edie may seem aimless, she begins to understand what is important to her life by the novel’s end. The sentences quoted in this review provide a glimpse of how Leilani focuses so precisely on the world that Edie inhabits, how eloquently she conveys Edie’s thoughts. The novel is wickedly smart, sly, and engrossing. Leilani’s novel may be a debut, but it is written in the assured voice of a seasoned writer who knows exactly what she wants to say.

RECOMMENDED

A Private Cathedral by James Lee Burke

 

Published by Simon & Schuster on August 11, 2020

Like many Robicheaux novels, A Private Cathedral is a meditation on the nature of evil. Crime writers have a tendency to conceptualize evil as a force, sometimes one that has supernatural origins. James Lee Burke did that in Light of the World. He returns to the theme of evil as a force beyond human understanding in A Private Cathedral.

Dave Robicheaux tells the story as something that happened many years in the past. In the present, Robicheaux and his friend Clete Purcell contemplate the evil of white supremacists who stand guard over statues of Confederate generals and the oppression of freedom that they represent. In the past, the story opens with Robicheaux watching Johnny Shondell, Louisiana’s answer to Elvis, performing on a bandstand. Isolda Balangie, who appears to be seventeen, approaches Robicheaux because he was once a cop. She tells him that the Balangie family has hated the Shondell family for generations. Johnny Shondell is nevertheless delivering her to his Uncle Mark for reasons Robicheaux would prefer not to understand.

Robicheaux visits Marcel LaForchette in prison at LaForchette’s request. Robicheaux agrees to see him because he “wanted to believe that evil has an explainable origin, one that has nothing to do with unseen forces or even a cancerous flaw in the midst of Creation, and that even the worst of men could reclaim the light they had banished from their souls.” LaForchette, a former mob enforcer who claims to have information about the Kennedy assassination, would like Robicheaux to give him a job so he can be paroled to Louisiana. His promises of reform make Robicheaux wonder whether he might have reclaimed the light.

LaForchette used to work for the Balangie family (he claims to have been the driver on the whack of a child molester ordered by the Balangies) but when Robicheaux next hears about him, he is on parole and working for the Shondells. Two private investigators approach Robicheaux for information about the disappearance of Isolde and its possible connection to LaForchette’s release.

The investigators end up dead and dismembered, as do a good many others. Robicheaux would like to stay out of it, but he can’t abide the Balangies and Shondells using a teenage girl as currency for a deal. His friend Clete Purcell would also prefer to avoid the drama until he finds himself strung upside down as a fire is being set below his head. Purcell isn’t sure how this fits into the Balangie/Shondell situation, but he means to find out.

This sets up what seems like a typical crime story — typical for Burke, who sets his stories in the deepest depths of southern corruption and depravity — but the novel takes a twist with the introduction of a reptilian character named Gideon Richetti, who is either a time traveler or has lived through evil events in the distant past. Richetti represents enduring evil, the kind that brought us Auschwitz and Huey Long and prisoners who die from dehydration after being locked for days in a steel coffin in the Louisiana heat.

Against his better judgment (or perhaps in the absence of judgment), Robicheaux becomes involved with Isolda’s mother, Penelope Balangie, who may or may not be married to Adonis Balangie. He also becomes involved (he thinks, given that he attributes his involvement on both occasions to blackouts) with Leslie Rosenberg, a woman Adonis is keeping on the side. Other key characters include a priest who may or may not have given into his temptations and a bent cop named Carroll LeBlane.

The plot is harrowing. As was true in Light of the World, its supernatural elements might (but probably don’t) have earthly explanations. Robicheaux would like to find a rational explanation for the slave ship he keeps seeing, the one that is also in Purcell’s dreams. He would like to think there is a reason for Richetti’s knowledge of events in Robicheaux’s past that he has never shared, or for Richetti himself, who starts the novel as more snake than human but evolves the story progresses. Those explanations will be just as hard for the reader to conjure as they are for Robicheaux. Everything that troubles Robicheaux could be in his imagination because, as he acknowledges, “superstition has its origin in fear.” Robicheaux has plenty to fear, but Burke makes clear that he isn’t alone. All our problems are grounded in fear.

Burke’s point seems to be that evil has had such an ineradicable presence throughout history that it can only be explained as a force that influences good people to do bad things. The alternative, as Robicheaux ponders, is that humans are not good at all, that they are fundamentally flawed and will trip over themselves in their hurry to harm others to satisfy their own sense of superiority. “I believe that most human activity is not rational and is often aimed at self-destruction,” Robicheaux says. “I also believe that ordinary human beings will participate in horrific deeds if they are provided a ritual that will allow them to put their conscience in abeyance.” Hence the ability of humans not just to turn their back on obvious evil, but to encourage it.

One reason to read any Burke novel is to luxuriate in his prose. “Here’s the strange thing about death,” Robicheaux explains. “At a certain age it’s always with you, lurking in the shade, pulling at your ankles, whispering in your ear when you pass a crypt. But it doesn’t get your real attention until you find yourself home alone and the wind swells inside the rooms and stresses the joists and lets you know what silence and solitude are all about.”

The other reason to read Burke is that few crime writers manage to plumb the souls of their protagonists, the struggle between their flawed natures and their fundamental decency, with such depth while still telling a riveting story. A Private Cathedral is just the latest reminder of why Burke occupies a laminated position in my list of favorite crime novelists.

RECOMMENDED

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

Published by Tor Books on April 14, 2020

The Last Emperox is the third book of the Interdependency trilogy that began with The Collapsing Empire and continued with The Consuming Fire. The first book sets up the detailed background that serves as a springboard for the next two. When I read it, I wondered whether all that background was really necessary. Perhaps the trilogy would produce a story that might better be told in a single volume without all the detail, however interesting it might be, that John Scalzi served up in The Collapsing Empire. With apologies to Scalzi, who knows more than I do about how to write John Scalzi books, I confess I was wrong. The final two volumes are each packed with storylines, way too much to cram into a single volume and all of it essential, or at least worthwhile. Anyway, trilogies give writers three advances and royalties on three books instead of one, and who am I to complain about Scalzi earning a living? Readers who invest in all three books will not find themselves cheated.

By the end of The Consuming Fire, we know that flow streams connecting various places that humans occupy in the Interdependency are collapsing. Marce Claremont has brought that news to the relatively new Emperox, whose formal name is Grayland II. Informally, she is still Cardenia of the House of Wu, a relatively young woman who is forced into the life of a ruler when she would rather have the freedom that comes with a less stressful existence. Like most of the female characters, Cardenia has a healthy sexual appetite, much to Marce’s benefit. Various political machinations have ensued, including attempted assassinations, but Cardenia is still holding power, although to what end is uncertain. When the flow streams finally collapse, the Interdependency will collapse with them, producing a period of anarchy and massive death brought about by insufficient and suddenly irreplaceable resources.

The Last Emperox continues the political plot that lies at the novel’s heart. The villainous Nadashe Nohamapetan, seemingly foiled in the second novel, is up to new tricks in this one. She is matched against Lady Kiva from the House of Lagos, a delightfully foul-mouthed woman whose sex drive might better be described as insatiable than healthy, and good for her. Kiva may be allied with Cardenia or working against her. Scalzi keeps the reader guessing.

The plot is lively. Scalzi uses it to make the always timely observation that power is short-sighted. People who hold it want to keep it. If their actions accelerate the destruction of whatever (the environment, the government, the Interdependency), they’ll let the next generation worry about it. Maintaining power and accumulating more of it trumps (pun intended) the harm they cause to everyone else. Naturally, rulers of the powerful houses hatch a plan to save themselves from the flow stream collapse because, if only a few people will be able to survive, they feel entitled to be the survivors.

I expected the protagonists to come up with a plan to save the human race (or that part of it that lives in the Interdependency, which or may not be all of it) and they do, sort of, but the plan surprised me. It’s both clever and a testament to the willingness of good people to set power aside and to sacrifice everything for the greater good. Maybe science fiction fans carry the idealism to believe that our better selves will ultimately triumph. Maybe the fond hope that there is something salvageable, something decent, in human nature is what makes me keep reading science fiction. That, and good storytelling that revitalizes the sense of wonder. Scalzi attains those objectives better than most science fiction writers. In The Last Emperox, he brings a well-conceived plot to a satisfying conclusion while leaving room for related stories to be told. I hope he gets around to telling them.

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Florida Man by Tom Cooper

Published by Random House on July 28, 2020

Florida Man, like Florida, is unpredictably weird in ways that provoke laughter. If a news headline begins with “Florida Man,” it will end with something like “arrested for teaching parrots to make death threats to IRS agents.” Florida is a land of sinkholes and decaying roadside attractions that overpromise bizarre wonders. It is also a haven for eccentrics. The fictional eccentric who carries the story in Florida Man, and the crew of collateral characters who weave in and out of the story, are sufficiently peculiar to mark themselves as true Floridians.

Florida Man’s protagonist is Reed Crowe, sometimes described as a hippie or a beach bum, definitely a stoner, something of a loner although not always by choice. Reed was once married to a woman named Heidi, with whom he maintains an on-and-(mostly)-off relationship. They lost their daughter, for which Crowe blames himself. Perhaps his lifestyle is a means of self-punishment or a futile attempt to forget by smoking himself into a daily oblivion.

Crowe owns a motel on Emerald Island and the Florida Man Mystery House, one of the roadside attractions that once littered Florida but have been largely undone by Disney World. He is assisted by Wayne Wade, Crowe’s childhood friend who, in adulthood, has become something of a degenerate, even by Florida standards. A likable kid named Eddie, perhaps the character who comes closest to a conventional definition of normal, also helps out.

Crowe got lucky at some point and rescued some bundles of weed from a smuggler’s airplane that crashed. He thought one of the sinking smugglers might have survived but talked himself out of believing that the man might still be alive. The smuggler, Hector “Catface” Morales, carries a grudge and eventually comes after Crowe.

Another character who seems interested in coming after Crowe is Henry Yahchilane, who suspects that Crowe might have stumbled onto evidence of a potential crime that Yahchilane would prefer to keep buried. The men have some tense moments until they find themselves sharing a predicament that neither of them might survive. After that, they sustain a lifelong friendship. Crowe and Yahchilane don’t necessarily go out of their way to spend time together, but they manage to be there for each other at critical moments.

The plot takes Crowe through a significant block of his life. While a secondary character through much of the novel, Yahchilane becomes a primary character at the end. The two men share a hurricane and other experiences as their lives intertwine, including a determination to do something about Wayne Wade before he causes more harm. Crowe is largely on his own, however, when Catface goes on a rampage in his quest for revenge.

Tom Cooper’s prose is snappy and his humor is dark. When I wasn’t cringing, I was laughing. As Florida Man meandered along its detour-laden plot, I occasionally wondered what the story is about. A novel doesn’t necessarily have to be about anything, but Florida Man turns out to be about life. Friendship, loss, aging, laughter and tears, change and endurance, the surprises that give life its flavor, and finally death. A key character realizes that life is the series of stories we accumulate before life ends. If enough of the stories are good, life was good. Cooper recounts a series of good stories, ranging from meaningful to silly, that add up to strange but, in the end, good lives for Crowe and Yahchilane.

RECOMMENDED

Talking Animals by Joni Murphy

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/FSG Originals on August 4, 2020

Fables about animals who behave as humans are often intended to provide insight into human nature. In part, Talking Animals can be seen as revealing the prejudices that people of different cultures or skin colors must overcome when they try to live together. Substitute herbivores for vegetarians and fur color for skin color to get a flavor of the story. The story burdens animals with other human problems, including global warming, political corruption, inequitable wealth distribution, immigration woes, and the poisoning of the food supply. There is even a version of the animal rights movement that seeks better treatment of fish and other inhabitants of the sea. The characters are just as frustrated as powerless humans by their inability to make fundamental changes to policies that are killing them.

Joni Murphy has some amusing takes on New York City, a city taken over by invasive species that immediately began to mythologize themselves. They laid out Manhattan in a grid because grids create the illusion that everything is under control, but the story of every city is one of brutality that has been “retold as one of heroism.” Wealthy animals get their wool “shorn by skillful barbers who specialize in fades” while less fortunate animals haul away the trash.

The protagonist, Alfonso, is an alpaca from Queens whose parents are Peruvian immigrants. Alfonso regards himself as a “waste of wool” after his 1,500-page dissertation is rejected as unfocused. Alfonso dreamed of transcending the “dumb cartoon version of who we are as a species” but Mitchell, a llama who is Alfonso's beset friend, reminds him that alpacas and llamas have a proud heritage as consensus builders. Mitchell believes camelids, meek by reputation, have the power to rise up against politicians who are trying to turn the city into a “mall prison.”

Alfonso works in a meaningless clerical job in City Hall. He regrets his failed relationship with a vicuna named Vivi and wonders whether his life can have any meaning as a failed academic. Mitchell is caught in the bureaucracy of the city’s Office of Affordable Housing. The mayor is a horse who, like many human politicians, is dedicated to the principle that resources should be channeled to the wealthy and that less fortunate animals should feed off the waste products that trickle down from the top. Global warming will soon leave mammals living underwater with sea dwellers, but the rich will be the last to get wet.

Another of Alfonso’s friends, a lemur named Pamella, is a supporter of the sea dwellers’ rights movement. Pamella laments that voting for the mayor’s opponent will install “pig problems as a solution to horse problems.” Change won’t come by continuing to run in the hamster wheel, even for hamsters. She looks to the sea “not for politics, but for its hard-stinging spray. What we do isn’t good enough, but the alternative is ceasing to exist.”

If people are true to their natures, so are the mammals in Talking Animals. When Alfonso tags along as Mitchell investigates a complaint about housing conditions, Alfonso ponders the nature of cats: “they liked mixing signals without acknowledging the tension between warmth and aggression. A cat might spend ten minutes glaring from across the bar, then buy you a drink.” Alfonso recognizes the “need to accept others as they are, in all their weirdness” and believes he should not judge animals for acting in conformity with their nature, but when a seemingly friendly cat suddenly bites his ear and scampers away, Alfonso has difficulty avoiding judgment. Mitchell is more sanguine: “Everybody bites sometimes,” he reminds Alfonso. So it is with humans.

Notwithstanding their natures, the mammals in Talking Animals seem to coexist more peacefully than humans. Rambunctious raccoons tell jokes to complacent goats; cows and llamas bond over their multiple stomachs and endless chewing. Except for a large heist of maple syrup by a gang of bears, there doesn’t seem to be much street crime. The ravages of unregulated capitalism, on the other hand, are just as harmful in the fable as they are in the human world.

The first half of the novel, setting up Alfonso’s failures as a doctoral candidate and as a file clerk are engaging. While I agree with its message of hope and empowerment, the second half becomes a bit preachy as Alfonso, Mitchell, and Pamella embark on an ambiguous quest to fight the good fight for social, environmental, and economic justice. Despite the plot’s unfortunate loss of focus, Talking Animals succeeds both as an illustration of human foibles and as an entertaining romp through the animal kingdom.

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