William Rayfet Hunter’s novel Sunstruck is agitated, horny and unpredictable

It’s hard to imagine anything more stressful than working as an A&E doctor – that is until you find out that William Rayfet Hunter was trying to write a book at the same time. In the midst of long shifts and the challenges of a recovering NHS post-lockdown, William wrote their debut novel, Sunstruck, a compelling exploration of race, class and identity.

Much like The White Lotus, the book opens with a body in the water accompanied by an ominous opening quote: ​“Make yourself all honey and the flies will devour you.” Working class and mixed-race, the unnamed protagonist is drawn into the opulent world of the Blake family when he decides to spend the summer with his best friend Lily at their French chateau. He’s nicknamed ​“Whiteboy” by his Black best friend Jazz, who teases him for hanging out with the ​“nought-point-nought-nought-one per cent.”

He defends his rich pals, and for the most part, his summer looks set to be a blur of lavish parties and expensive champagne while he plays the part of a polite outsider – shrugging off microaggressions and condescending comments. When he falls in love with Lily’s rakish brother, Whiteboy tumbles into a complex knot of secrets that he struggles to escape from.

Gripping and sweaty in every sense, Sunstruck it’s the type of absorbing poolside book that will leave your arms aching from holding it above your head for so long. We decided to give its author a ring to ask all about it.

Were there any aspects of your life that inspired Sunstruck?

I grew up in a beautiful, rural part of Cheshire, just outside Manchester. My primary school was tiny, whimsical and completely bizarre and I loved it. At fourteen I was sent to a boarding school a couple of hours away from home. I have pretty complicated feelings about it. It gave me an incredible education and it sort of felt like having 800 brothers but it also didn’t feel like a safe place to be myself. I was Black, camp and closeted and there was an ingrained mistrust of all of those things at that school. I think Sunstruck is in many ways a response to some of the things I observed and absorbed there.

Why did you set the book during summer?

I think as the recent heatwave has shown, summer is alive with possibility and chaos. People are agitated, horny, unpredictable. Heat foments desire. There is also the feeling of a brewing storm, whipped up by the humid air, foreshadowing what might happen when the tension finally breaks. In the latter half of the novel, we get a snapshot of a year where the changing seasons come to represent a shifting in the emotional undercurrents of the characters as their lives spiral out of control.

Why did you decide to leave the protagonist unnamed?

The novel is largely about identity: how it is stripped away, projected, transmuted through other people’s perceptions. In leaving him unnamed, it allows the other characters to colour him in whatever way is most useful to them. For the Blakes, he represents something new and beautiful and interesting but also something that could be discarded or forgotten. It also leaves the reader more able to characterise him as they wish, and maybe to question how and why they are doing that.

Often, the microaggressions that the protagonist experiences at the Blake house are centred around clothing. Characters offer him new items or tell to take certain things off. Why is that?

Clothing is often an essential and slippery thread woven into the fabric of social mores. Class boundaries are reinforced by adherence to these unspoken rules. Often you are only aware you have broken them after the fact. The motif of clothes and the rules around them offers another perspective on how we perform our identities and how they are policed. The Blakes treat the protagonist almost like a doll, dressing and moulding him to fit their standards.

You were working as a doctor whilst writing this book. Did that have an impact on Sunstruck?

Totally. Medicine is not exactly compatible with the creative process. It was often impossible to find the mental room that is required for writing, which can be time consuming and also requires an emotional and intellectual expansiveness. It came to a point where I had to choose to step back from my medical work to focus on getting the book finished. That led to a lot of reflection on whether or not being a doctor was the right path for me.

Did your writing process involve any specific research?

I’ve spent a lot of time dating wealthy, white, problematic bisexuals – does that count as research?

I’ve often seen the book compared to Saltburn. How do you feel about that?

I first saw the trailer for Saltburn just after I’d submitted my second round of edits to my publisher. At first I was a bit dismayed. I kept thinking, ​“Oh no, this story has already been told, is my work going to be derivative, will anyone care?” But then I saw the film and I realised that we’re actually trying to say quite different things. Both stories deal with an interesting moment we’re in where the fact of growing wealth inequality in this country and the global north more generally is becoming ever more apparent, and that is being reflected in culture. It’s also a story that has deep roots in the canon, if you look at things like The Great Gatsby or Brideshead Revisited or The House of Mirth you can see the legacy of this kind of story about class and optics and social positioning.

What are your hopes for this summer?

An end to the violent assault by the government and media on trans people, some time to write and a free Palestine.

Sunstruck is available online and in all good bookshops now, would you believe?