Photo: Courtesy of the publishers The protagonist of Raven Leilani’s Luster, a Black 23-year-old named Edie, is having an affair with an older married white man named Eric when an age-old curiosity arises: the wife. Edie’s social-media investigation yields no results, so she decides to go to his house, which she finds unlocked. In his wife’s closet, Edie gathers “the silk and wool and cashmere in my hands.” Then she hears a voice. When she turns around, a white woman is standing there wearing yellow rubber gloves and a Yale T-shirt. “I know who you are but I don’t want to discuss it, if that’s all right with you,” she says. “I just wasn’t finished looking at you.” It is often in the home where the plainest expressions of politics appear. This year, you could see it everywhere in the domestic novel. Leilani’s Luster, J. Courtney Sullivan’s Friends and Strangers, and Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age … [Read more...] about The Villainous White Mother Was All Over the Domestic Novel This Year