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Luster by Raven Leilani: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Review (⚠️ Some spoilers ⚠️)

This book did something to me that I cannot wholly put my finger on. It reads so detached and icy, and reminds me of my saddest/numbest moments, which may be why I disliked it so much at first, in the way you look at your burgeoning crush with repulsion. Edie’s introspection is so intensely narrated, you have no option but to witness her in her full humanity. Leilani has successfully written the most miserable character I’ve ever encountered. It’s messy and aggravating. I hate it, and I love it even more.

One thing I’m impressed by is the details; Leilani could offer a masterclass is implicit characterization: “We share a single cigarette because [Rebecca] says it makes her feel like it doesn’t count” (97). The entire novel is quippy observations like this, and I love that style of writing. I also enjoy how slowly Leilani rolls out major details, tucking them into a sentence and moving along, like that of Edie’s mother’s suicide (a mere thought that crosses her mind as she assess’ Rebecca’s curtain colour). Everything in this book is so intentional and slight: the old white woman staring at Edie from her window, the parallel of house/homelessness between Akila and Edie, the contrast between Edie’s intimacy with Eric and Rebecca…

Speaking of which, I could not care less about Eric at all; he’s clearly positioned as the vehicle through which Edie is exposed to Rebecca, with whom I believe she develops a queerplatonic relationship with, and Akila, whom she can heal her inner child (and mother) with by being a good elder. This is one of the slow (but also fast?) burns whose quality and stakes increase exponentially as the pages flip - then just like that, it’s all over.

Most Compelling Moments 🎨

Edie describing her father’s struggles as a disabled veteran

Edie wrapping Akila’s hair after it’s burnt by chemical treatment

Edie and Rebecca making art in the morgue

Edie and Rebecca’s HUG

Akila arriving at Comic Con and meeting a Black girl dressed as Geordi La Forge

That police scene.

Favourite Quotes 🔥

🚬 “She is aware of the irony of being a medical examiner who smokes, but for all the blackened lungs she’s seen, it is more disturbing to open the chest cavity of a veteran and find it pristine. ‘Imagine living so carefully that there are no signs you lived at all’”.

🦋 “I cannot help feeling that I am at the end of a fluctuation that originated with a single butterfly…. With one half degree of difference, everything I want could be mine. I am good, but not good enough, which is worse than simply being bad. It is almost.”

🍊 “God is not for women. He is for the fruit. He makes you want and he makes you wicked, and while you sleep, he plants a seed in your womb that will be born just to die.”

❤️‍🔥 “He is the most obvious thing that has ever happened to me, and all around the city it is happening to other silly, half-formed women excited by men who’ve simply met the prerequisite of living a little more life, a terribly unspecial thing…”

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Hunting By Stars by Cherie Dimaline: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Review (⚠️ Some spoilers ⚠️)

You know those rare moments when a sequel is better than the original, and you realize just how invested you are in the series? Hunting by Stars, in its entirety, is one of those moments. I haven’t read an action in so long, and it was the first time in a while I found myself speaking - yelling, crying, laughing - out loud to a book.

Dimaline continues to outline a horrific future in which Indigenous peoples are hunted, captured and tortured in the confinement of new residential “schools” in order to be sucked dry of their bone marrow, carrying the antidote to the plague of dreamlessness existing in this world. Although this is meant to be a post-apocalyptic text, it seems pretty allegorical for how Western society has always treated Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, as inconveniences to be genocided but not before pillaging their resources/medicines/systems/ways of life to build the foundation of a new, fraudulent society. And I couldn’t help but feel increasingly sick as I read along because not only have I continued to watch such things happen in my lifetime, but I fear we’re on a trajectory that mirrors the ultra-oppressive wasteland that The Marrow Thieves dreams up.

An aspect of the reading I really liked was how the text examined traitorous behaviour (as it’s described) from within the Indigenous community and the emotionally complexity behind getting to that point. From Frenchie’s own shame at realizing he’s let some conditioning seep in once captured, to his brother’s complete brainwashing, to the Chief’s gross and exploitative cult. As an outsider, I really grappled with anger towards these displays, thinking about how I feel when some Black folks similarly shuck and jive, selling out the collective for the individual (and really for white supremacy). It was a spot of peculiar, sad empathy; I wanted to reach out and shake them so bad.

Despite moments of true despair, the book gets increasingly better with every page and allows some joy. I’m super excited for where things are going forward with Rose, Ishkoda, and the whole gang. This series is a prayer, a cautionary tale, a nightmare and a dream. I’m so thankful to Cherie Dimaline for materializing it into this world.

Most Compelling Moments 🗡

Chi Boy meeting Minerva under the floorboard of a trailer and Wab under a beaver lodge.

Performative allyship manifesting itself as white women flocking around an Indigenous man in a cult. Unsurprising.

Frenchie collecting and reciting the napkin messages of school residents.

Nam murdering the Chief to secure their escape.

Mitch throwing the toy solider in the fire.

One of the white moms saying “Ew. Salt,” when she brings it to Miigwaans. Dimaline knew what she was doing here.

Wab giving birth in a cage, cheered on by the family.

Favourite Quote ✨

☁️ “How could dreams be transferred into such poisoned heads? I couldn’t imagine minds capable of making schemes like that also being able to create nighttime cinema of swimming through the stars or losing teeth by the handful. But it didn’t take depth to build cruelty, only a profound lack of hope.” — Frenchie (305)