Ray Kingfisher

This story takes us back to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.  It's real food for thought.

The Sugar Men

Amazon.com  The Sugar Men

My review - 

This latest book by Ray Kingfisher begins as the life of Susannah Morgan is drawing to an end.  She is an American citizen but was born a Jew in Berlin.  She has suppressed her memories and not told her children of what she went through.  In her last few months of life she makes the decision to go back to Germany and to visit the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she spent a year as a teenager.  Gradually she allows herself to revisit her memories and with them comes the decision to visit one other person who is very important to her.

This book is wonderfully told and expressed and it doesn’t pull any punches.  Susannah appears to be a crusty old dear and makes jokes when her children are trying to talk to her seriously.  Eventually she trusts herself and then trusts them with the times in her life which took so much from her.  They also took much from the soldiers whose job it was to liberate the camp.  The story the book tells is now so far in the past that not many people still remember it.  It’s a story which should never be forgotten.

Ray Kingfisher

I've read another of Ray's books and enjoyed it - this is another cracker.  Poignant and funny at the same time.

Matchbox Memories

Amazon.com  Matchbox Memories

My review - 


The narrator of this story, Ian Greefe, is called back from his home in London to the family home in Cumbria where he grew up.  His mum Ruth, who adopted him and his sister and brother, is suffering from Alzheimers and her husband Harry has been taken into hospital for an operation and can’t look after her.  Ian is called upon to take his turn as carer.  He has to deal with his sister’s acerbic nagging and his brother’s strange and uncharacteristic behaviour, as well as Ruth’s growing eccentricities.

This is a lovely book to read.  The author’s writing style is clear, easy to read and sharply funny.  There are secrets abounding in this family, some more serious than others.  Ian grows to feel he can call them Mum and Dad for the first time.  The growing relationship with Ruth, as she goes off at tangents or forgets where she’s going, where Harry is, what shoes she should have on, is told with warmth and real feeling.  Ian is able to share his own family’s secrets while his sister and brother also ‘come clean’ about their lives.  What more can I say?  I enjoyed this book enormously.

Ray Kingfisher

Ray is a new author to me but was recommended by Joo of the Kindle Users Forum.  She picked a good one to steer me towards!

Slow Burning Lies

Amazon.com  Slow Burning Lies

My review

I’ve just finished this book and I’m still getting my breath back!  It’s a story about dreams, about identity, about childhood influences and fractured relationships.  It’s rather amazing.  For most of the book, the narrator is a man telling his own incredible story and we are largely unaware of who he is.  We, and his listener, suspect he is the man called Patrick, the subject of the story.  As the book progresses, it becomes very dark, rather unsettling and a bit frightening in its intensity.  What’s happening to Patrick?  Is he dreaming the future?  Are his dreams real?  He confides in his boss at work, in spite of his misgivings.

This is a tense and tightly woven story told by one character to another.  We only realise why he has chosen to tell his tale to this particular person in the last few pages of the story and at that point I felt my own pulse racing.  As the book progressed I found myself wondering what was going on, beginning to get the picture and finally wondering if it really could happen.  Ray Kingfisher is a new writer to me but he has a very readable style and I enjoyed his imagination.  I’m certainly going to look at more of his work in the near future.