Overview

A beautifully told story about a disillusioned woman searching for love and belonging from the winner of the 2024 VPLA Unpublished Manuscript Award. Perfect for fans of Deborah Levy and Rachel Cusk, The Sun Was Electric Light explores what it means to live a good life. 'I read this pure, pained, beautiful book in a single burst, and emerged from it with heart and nerves rinsed clean.' Helen Garner Disillusioned with her life in New York, Ruth returns to a lake town in Guatemala where she had been happy a decade earlier. There, in Panajachel, she meets two very different women- the calm and practical Emilie, and the turbulent and intoxicating Carmen. Deciding to stay and build a life at the lake, Ruth finds work first as a nanny to a wealthy local family, then as an English teacher at a village school. Meanwhile, she becomes increasingly infatuated by her friendship with Carmen, pushing away the stability of her connection with Emilie. As Carmen's fragile relationship with the world splinters, the difference between being a visitor and truly belonging becomes clear, and Ruth is forced to act. The Sun Was Electric Light is a sublime novel about searching for belonging and a life that makes sense.

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9780702268892

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Reviews

'I read this pure, pained, beautiful book in a single burst, and emerged from it with heart and nerves rinsed clean.' Helen Garner 'This novel sifted like sand between my fingers, and then it pulled me under and made me weep, for everyone I have ever loved. I followed Rachel Morton's desire-line story wherever it took me, and I will always be where it ended up.' Laura McPhee-Browne 'A work of shining, spare clarity, that asks what it means to live a life of honest connection - to one's self, to love, to this world.' Peggy Frew 'What a special book this is. Tender, poignant and filled with longing for those people and places we've lost - and perhaps never truly found in the first place. Rachel Morton's novel leads us through the ache of grief, for self and others, towards acceptance.' Dame Quentin Bryce 'Ruminations on belonging and the sense of being an outsider reveal how an insatiable desire for something more from life can sometimes cause harm rather than good. In a meditative and hypnotic style, Morton has drawn in-depth characters with complex relationships. The judges were impressed with how contained the story was and how the plot, while centred mostly on emotional stakes, remained unpredictable, but believable.' VPLA judges' report

Author Information

Rachel Morton is a writer living on Eastern Maar/Gunditjmara Country in south-west Victoria. Her poetry has appeared in Meanjin Quarterly, The Moth Magazine and various other publications. Rachel was shortlisted for the 2019 Australian Catholic University Prize for Poetry. The Sun Was Electric Light is her first novel and won the 2024 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.

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