“The central question of the book,” says Sunstruck author William Rayfet Hunter, “is who really has power over themselves and the people around them?” Rayfet Hunter’s captivating debut novel follows an unnamed narrator, a mixed-race student from Manchester, as he’s welcomed into the privileged and overwhelmingly white world of the Blake family. He’s invited to their grand summer house in the south of France by his campus pal Lily, but finds himself more drawn to Felix, her capricious and sexually ambiguous older brother.
Published by Merky Books – Stormzy’s imprint of Penguin Random House UK – Sunstruck is attracting inevitable comparisons to Emerald Fennell’s country house movie-slash-meme factory Saltburn. It also contains echoes of past literary classics about shadowy interlopers – among them, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. But Rayfet Hunter, a former junior doctor who secured his book deal by winning the 2022 Merky Books New Writers’ Prize, has a distinctive voice of his own.
In fact, his book works as both a pacy page-turner and a timely piece of social commentary. Felix and Lily’s mother Annie Blake, a feline schemer who swapped mid-tier pop stardom for upper-class matriarchy, is an especially layered character who really guards her family’s image and elevated standing. You’ll finish the book wondering who should play her if Sunstruck becomes a limited series.
“I wanted to look at how the big structures of power – whiteness, class and money – are wielded in the same way as smaller forms of power like desire, wit and charm,” Rayfet Hunter says. “Sometimes they’re viewed as tit for tat, but it’s not a fair fight. Disarming someone with charm isn’t the same thing as being able to wield the sharp end of white supremacy in the UK.”
Below, William Rayfet Hunter talks through the key themes and enigmatic central characters in their vibrant and devourable debut novel.
Nick Levine: You’ve said this novel started with one character: Felix. What made you want to build a fictional world around him?
William Rayfet Hunter: He’s an amalgamation of a lot of veiled love affairs and crushes from my teenage years and admittedly my twenties. I was like, “What is it about men like Felix that gets everyone under their thumb?” He’s kind of the archetype of that handsome, foppish, slightly cruel upper-class British guy who’s been the protagonist of so many stories, and not just love stories. He’s Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones, but he’s also the platoon leader in every war film. And so I wanted to peel back the layers and explore what happens there’s no “happy ever after”: when everyone is bending over backwards trying to please this person who really can’t be pleased.
NL: One major difference between Felix and, say, Daniel Cleaver is his queerness. Though Felix doesn’t put a label on his sexuality, he definitely isn’t straight.
WRH: Totally. And that’s something I was interested in. At one point Felix calls himself bisexual, but it’s part of a joke he’s making about being sent to the Priory. Really, he’s slippery and refuses to be categorised. I think sometimes with queerness and queer relationships, there’s a need to label it to legitimise it, but people like Felix are resistant to that because it would have an impact on their social standing. Felix sees himself as above relationships, above sexuality and even above the need to treat people the way he should.
“In my opinion, the real relationships in life are ones where you don’t have to hide. So I hope it makes people reflect on the parts of themselves they’re hiding and maybe even corral some compassion for themselves” – William Rayfet Hunter
NL: How did the narrator take shape? We see Felix’s world through eyes, but it’s so tantalising that we don’t even know his name.
WRH: I wanted to create a character who doesn’t know who he is at the start of the novel, but hopefully starts to get more of an identity. To begin with, you see him having different identities thrown on him, which is why everyone calls him something different: his grandma calls him “sweetness”, the Blakes call him “darling”, Jazz calls him “white boy”. The things he says to the Blakes aren’t that impactful, but his internal monologue is actually quite critical – he’s watching and judging these people. I wanted to convey that duality of who we present to other people versus who we actually are inside.
NL: What is his appeal to the Blakes? Is he a beautiful blank canvas that they can mould and perhaps exoticise?
WRH: I think his apparent lack of a large external personality allows them to make him what they want him to be. I might be telling on myself now, but as a teenager, I definitely had different versions of myself that I used in different situations. I learned quite early on that if you were quiet but laughed in all the right places, people would just assume you were one of the in-group. So there’s that aspect of Felix, but I also think there’s an element of exoticism. Sometimes unwittingly and maybe with the best will in the world, certain people are drawn to certain others because of their desire to be seen as “progressive” or “interesting”.
NL: Do you think the narrator has a harder time grappling with his race than his sexuality? He’s subtly othered by the Blakes, but also has Jazz calling him “white boy” all the time, which feels like a needle.
WRH: I think so. He sees his sexuality as a force: something that is driving him towards Felix and hopefully towards love and comfort. But he sees his race as a barrier and something that can be used against him – because it can. As attitudes change in certain parts of society, things like sexuality become much less important. But something like race, which is instantly noticeable and steeped in hundreds of years of history and white supremacy, I think that takes a lot longer to change.
NL: Finally, what do you really hope people take away from this story?
WRH: The key thing I’m trying to say is that we’re all hiding and manoeuvring. And in my opinion, the real relationships in life are ones where you don’t have to hide. So I hope it makes people reflect on the parts of themselves they’re hiding and maybe even corral some compassion for themselves. You might think people won’t like those parts of you, but they’re what makes you who you are.
Sunstruck by William Rayfet Hunter is published by Merky Books, and is out now.
