The Sun Was Electric Light (Rachel Morton, UQP)

Haunted by a pervasive sense of unreality, Ruth leaves her life in New York to return to the last place she loved: a lake in southern Guatemala. In the small town of Panajachel, she meets Emilie, who seems as grounded in reality as Ruth is lost, and they share a brief period of intimacy before Emilie departs for a job in Mexico. It is only when Ruth encounters Carmen – ‘the only real thing in the room’ – that she is drawn back into the world and her life. Yet Carmen’s own turbulent search for meaning begins to destabilise Ruth just at the point where she feels closest to being ‘reunited’ with herself. Winner of the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript under the title ‘Panajachel’, The Sun Was Electric Light is poet Rachel Morton’s debut novel. Written in stark prose that recalls the frank and searching tone of Annie Ernaux’s autoethnographic writing, this travel narrative is as startling as it is quietly restrained. Against the backdrop of Carmen’s erratic behaviour and the presence of the mother who employs her as a nanny, Ruth measures her life in comparison with those around her while waiting passively ‘for a way forward to appear’. Moving lightly between the exterior and interior worlds, Morton asks whether meaning must be found, created or if it even exists in a world riddled with mistakes.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Megan Cheong is a teacher, writer and critic living and working on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung land. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Sydney Review of Books and Kill Your Darlings. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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