The unnamed narrator of William Rayfet Hunter’s debut novel, a mixed-race aspiring musician from Manchester, is plunged into an unfamiliar milieu when his posh college buddy, Lily, invitations him to spend a summer time at her mother and father’ chateau within the French countryside. There’s an undercurrent of unease – at one level he’s mistaken for employees – however the household are welcoming. Lily’s bisexual brother, Felix, a good-looking actor and enfant horrible who has simply emerged from a stint within the Priory, is particularly pleasant. A relationship develops, which brings perks for the narrator: Felix’s father offers him a soft job at his property agency, and his mom guarantees to tug strings and get him an audition with the Royal Academy. All of it appears too good to final – and so it proves.
Sunstruck is a narrative about identification and belonging. The protagonist had frolicked with goth children in school; his black greatest buddy, Jasmine, teasingly nicknames him “WhiteBoy” as a result of he’s so out of contact with black popular culture. However when the motion strikes to London within the second half of the novel, and notably after a black buddy of Jasmine’s is badly overwhelmed up by police on the Notting Hill carnival, a racial consciousness progressively awakens inside him. He suspects that he’ll by no means be actually accepted in Felix’s world, and their relationship is troublingly imbalanced. But he can’t fairly tear himself away: “The intoxicating sense of belonging, of transferring via an area I didn’t know existed … that is one thing I can’t quit.”
Psychological injury from a traumatic childhood makes the narrator notably vulnerable to Felix’s charms. We be taught, via a sequence of poignant flashbacks, that his mom suffered from extreme psychological well being issues, they usually have been estranged for a few years. Nonetheless, we get little sense of what makes him tick within the right here and now; he’s one thing of a passenger in his personal story, outlined extra by disconnectedness than any persona of his personal. His excellent traits are bodily attractiveness and an agreeable method, however these usually are not a lot good to the reader. The primary-person voice is underwhelming firm on the web page, at one level musing tritely on the melancholia of birthdays. Lily’s siblings name her Magpie, “As a result of she collects lovely issues” – maybe he’s merely a himbo?
Fortunately, there’s loads of plot; the novel’s brisk pacing, along with its shrewd mix of emotional sincerity, brooding intrigue and political overtones, make for a energetic seaside learn. The prose reads like a cross between an airport romance and a screenplay for a Saltburn-style tv drama. Heightened feelings manifest, repeatedly, in intense sensations within the narrator’s chest. The characters in Lily and Felix’s milieu really feel like inventory sorts, alternating between blithe, jolly-hockey-sticks esprit and sociopathic coldness, and the descriptions of upper-class opulence have a equally generic high quality: an ideal many individuals and issues “glitter” and “glow”; garments, drinks and lovers are “costly” or “expensive-looking”.
At instances, the narrator himself appears to have half an eye fixed on display adaptation: “The shaft of sunshine slides from my face to his” whereas the lovers cuddle; after an embrace, “our reflections blur contained in the window”. Some moments are downright schlocky: “an prompt, a flash of one thing like fury in Felix’s eyes … it flares and bursts just like the filament in a digital camera bulb.”
Early on in Sunstruck, the narrator occurs throughout the headless torso of an alabaster statue of Venus, the Roman goddess of affection. Felix’s mom had made it, and Felix had decapitated it in a match of rage – “A warning to not get in my son’s means,” she quips. Right here is the novel in microcosm: the on-the-nose metaphor; the sinister, hiding-in-plain-sight menace; and our dozy, hapless hero, too mesmerised to heed the indicators.
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