Sunstruck - William Rayfet Hunter
A view through a villa window of a rocky island outcrop and a body of water, and there is a young man in blue shorts standing looking out.
One of the best books I have ever read, if this isn’t a modern classic in 50+ years there is something very wrong.
5 Stars
William Rayfet Hunter's Sunstruck is a debut novel set to be released on the 15th of May 2025 by Cornerstone.
SEMI-SPOILER REVIEW
Sunstruck follows a young man of Jamaican descent as he visits the rich Blake family mansion in the south of France following an invitation from best friend Lily Blake. There he meets her family; younger sibling Dot (never Dorothea), mum Annie (who just so happens to be the favourite singer of the unnamed protagonist’s possibly late mother) and Felix, Lily's brother, as handsome and charismatic as he is mysterious. It doesn't take long for the protagonist to fall hard for the magnetic Felix, and who can blame him? If I met a stunning queer James Taylor fan oozing charm and mischief I definitely would, too.
Told in two parts, Honey and Flies, the first follows the trip to the villa and is told in chapters of days. The second starts eleven months later in London and deals with the consequences of the trip, told through months instead of days.
Beautifully written and atmospheric, Sunstruck is a masterwork of not only queer fiction, but also every other canon it belongs to.
I love the flashbacks to when the protagonist was a child, there is a very childlike lilt to the prose, evoking Jacqueline Wilson’s best work of emulating a child's perspective. There are also moments that have such a visceral edge to them, so relatable that I felt them almost physically, and this is the gift of Rayfet Hunter's prose. I can only imagine how reading this book must be for queer people of colour and especially Black readers.
A lot of advice you are given as a writer is to do with how varying lengths of sentences affects pace; lots of short sentences quicken, longer ones drag things out. There is a scene just over halfway through the novel where Rayfet Hunter uses a succession of fairly long sentences to describe an incredibly traumatic event and somehow this section feels like it goes by in no time at all, and all too long. And it is so, so claustrophobic. I really can't overstate how amazing the prose in this novel is.
There are some sections in the second half of the novel that I found incredibly difficult to read, not because they weren't enjoyable, but because I felt the emotions of the scenes so viscerally. Maybe I just get too attached/involved in some of the stories I read/watch, but there aren't many writers who can affect me to the extent that William Rayfet Hunter did here. Trust me when I say you should be prepared to feel a whole gamut of emotions, sometimes in the space of one page, Rayfet Hunter is just that talented.
One of the most beautiful books I've ever read, Sunstruck is the kind of book that feels destined to sit in the annals of history as a masterpiece. I don't say this lightly, I loved it that much, and feels to me as much of a classic as the likes of Jane Eyre and Orlando. if you told me that in the next century this book reached those heights, I can't say I would be surprised.
The ending of the novel was inevitable, but I still couldn't help wishing things could turn out differently. I really cared about the characters in this story, even some of the ones who were not-so morally good. Maybe I got too invested (as anyone who knows me will tell you I do a lot - Doctor Who, Dragon Age, Warehouse 13…), but William Rayfet Hunter's writing skill definitely contributed to it.
If only summer could last forever…
