Rachel Morton’s debut is a languid, easy novel that explores the unease that emerges when a busy life is forced into slowness. The Sun Was Electric Light, which won the 2024 Victorian premier’s literary award for an unpublished manuscript, follows Ruth, a woman who feels increasingly disconnected from her life in New York, so she moves to a small lake town in Guatemala. It is the last place she remembers where things felt real.
In Panajachel, Ruth lives a life of simplicity, allowing instinct to guide her through the days. She feels no particular urgency or anxiety – and yet, she isn’t exactly at peace either. The solution she had come to Guatemala in search of continues to elude her: “I realised that the lake would not solve my problems and that nothing would solve my problems. I gave up trying and giving up felt liberating, for about fifteen minutes at a time.”
