Ray KingfisherReviews

I read this book in one sitting while traveling across country by air, and found myself thoroughly engrossed in the story. It is the fictional account of a woman who survived the Holocaust as a prisoner in Bergen-Belsen. She continues to have nightmares and returns to Germany to confront her horrifically painful past. Recommended to those who enjoy family histories or historical fiction centered around the Holocaust.

Near the end of her days, a terminally ill holocaust survivor travels back to Germany to lay to rest the memories that have haunted her life. Susannah was a teenager when the war ended and the British soldiers shut down the prison camp. Although she was free those memories and nightmares have tortured her for 65 years. They have become part of her very being and she can not let go of a past that is embedded in her soul and effected every aspect of her life from her shopping habits to her marriage, to the way she has raised her children. This was a heart wrenching read. Have tissues near by.

I received an advance copy for review

I'm sad to say that this is just not a book for me. I thought the blurb sounded very intriguing, but alas I struggled both with the very predictable story and the flat characters. I really wanted to like the book. However, I felt I didn't even have enough willpower to plow through the book to even finish it.

Buddy read with Erin!

This book is difficult for me to review because I have such mixed feelings about it. The book uses a contemporary setting, event and time as a vehicle for actually telling a story about the Holocaust, and herein lies the first problem. The characters and situations portrayed in the contemporary setting lack authenticity. As characters, they are not credible. The development of their characters is too shallow, too incomplete to really know much about them. When the author attempts to make it seem as if he intended for that to be the case by explaining their behaviors in the last chapters of the book, his explanation is again too superficial for credibility.
While Diane’s character is dealt with in the final chapters, the character of Brad, the schmuck who tolerated her for years, is not amplified. He has put up with too much to be a realistic character, even IF there were a reasonable explanation for Diane’s behavior.
The scenes in the Nazi Death Camps are vivid, detailed, lengthy nod overwrought. While at first, they generate the kind of revulsion in the reader that the author intended, they drag on for so long that empathy and sympathy are difficult to maintain, and I found myself thinking, “OK. I get it. Move on.”
In creating these situations, however, the author has also developed moral tension, something found in far too few modern novels.
Both of the two main characters are forced to make moral choices, one much worse and more fundamental than the other. The novel portrays them each wrestling briefly with their moral decisions before making them. Since the real central theme of the book deals with moral dilemma and difficult choices, there should have been more attention paid to the struggles the consciences of the two characters had. They each resolve their moral challenge too quickly and with far too little moral introspection.
While the ending of the novel deals with what each did to face his lifelong
moral turmoil and the consequences of the moral choices each had made while in the death camps, even in that portrayal, the struggles lacked depth and failed to elicit poignancy.
William Faulkner, when accepting his Nobel Prize, said, “Good literature portrays the human heart in conflict with itself,” which is really an excellent description of what “moral conflict” means. This book had an opportunity to delve into that conflict but chose instead to only give us only a snapshot of it.

This book is difficult for me to review because I have such mixed feelings about it. The book uses a contemporary setting, event and time as a vehicle for actually telling a story about the Holocaust, and herein lies the first problem. The characters and situations portrayed in the contemporary setting lack authenticity. As characters, they are not credible. The development of their characters is too shallow, too incomplete to really know much about them. When the author attempts to make it seem as if he intended for that to be the case by explaining their behaviors in the last chapters of the book, his explanation is again too superficial for credibility.
While Diane’s character is dealt with in the final chapters, the character of Brad, the schmuck who tolerated her for years, is not amplified. He has put up with too much to be a realistic character, even IF there were a reasonable explanation for Diane’s behavior.
The scenes in the Nazi Death Camps are vivid, detailed, lengthy nod overwrought. While at first, they generate the kind of revulsion in the reader that the author intended, they drag on for so long that empathy and sympathy are difficult to maintain, and I found myself thinking, “OK. I get it. Move on.”
In creating these situations, however, the author has also developed moral tension, something found in far too few modern novels.
Both of the two main characters are forced to make moral choices, one much worse and more fundamental than the other. The novel portrays them each wrestling briefly with their moral decisions before making them. Since the real central theme of the book deals with moral dilemma and difficult choices, there should have been more attention paid to the struggles the consciences of the two characters had. They each resolve their moral challenge too quickly and with far too little moral introspection.
While the ending of the novel deals with what each did to face his lifelong
moral turmoil and the consequences of the moral choices each had made while in the death camps, even in that portrayal, the struggles lacked depth and failed to elicit poignancy.
William Faulkner, when accepting his Nobel Prize, said, “Good literature portrays the human heart in conflict with itself,” which is really an excellent description of what “moral conflict” means. This book had an opportunity to delve into that conflict but chose instead to only give us only a snapshot of it.

This book is difficult for me to review because I have such mixed feelings about it. The book uses a contemporary setting, event and time as a vehicle for actually telling a story about the Holocaust, and herein lies the first problem. The characters and situations portrayed in the contemporary setting lack authenticity. As characters, they are not credible. The development of their characters is too shallow, too incomplete to really know much about them. When the author attempts to make it seem as if he intended for that to be the case by explaining their behaviors in the last chapters of the book, his explanation is again too superficial for credibility.
While Diane’s character is dealt with in the final chapters, the character of Brad, the schmuck who tolerated her for years, is not amplified. He has put up with too much to be a realistic character, even IF there were a reasonable explanation for Diane’s behavior.
The scenes in the Nazi Death Camps are vivid, detailed, lengthy nod overwrought. While at first, they generate the kind of revulsion in the reader that the author intended, they drag on for so long that empathy and sympathy are difficult to maintain, and I found myself thinking, “OK. I get it. Move on.”
In creating these situations, however, the author has also developed moral tension, something found in far too few modern novels.
Both of the two main characters are forced to make moral choices, one much worse and more fundamental than the other. The novel portrays them each wrestling briefly with their moral decisions before making them. Since the real central theme of the book deals with moral dilemma and difficult choices, there should have been more attention paid to the struggles the consciences of the two characters had. They each resolve their moral challenge too quickly and with far too little moral introspection.
While the ending of the novel deals with what each did to face his lifelong
moral turmoil and the consequences of the moral choices each had made while in the death camps, even in that portrayal, the struggles lacked depth and failed to elicit poignancy.
William Faulkner, when accepting his Nobel Prize, said, “Good literature portrays the human heart in conflict with itself,” which is really an excellent description of what “moral conflict” means. This book had an opportunity to delve into that conflict but chose instead to only give us only a snapshot of it.

Sugar Men was really good, a steady paced, historical read about life in Bergen- Belsen during WW2. Unbelievably realistic.
I'd have given the book a higher star rating but the ending just plain suc-ed.....drawn out and disconnected. Just my opinion.

The story is about two boys – friends almost from birth in 1923 – who grow up in Ukraine. One of the boys (Asher) is Jewish and the other Ukrainian, and they are inseparable. When Asher’s parents decide they must move to Warsaw, both boys are devastated. They meet again, years later, but in a very different world.

Kingfisher’s sparse writing style while almost apropos for the subject matter will leave many readers feeling cheated somehow. He has golden opportunities to reel his readers into this historical story, but lets the opportunities pass him by. Even his descriptions of the two boys leaves readers wanting more about each of them in order to more easily relate to them. When Asher reaches Warsaw, another opportunity is lost because Kingfisher fails to adequately describe not only the city but the events leading up to the destruction of the Jewish Ghetto. And then there is Treblinka concentration camp.... The old writers’ adage “show, don’t tell” should have been used to better advantage by Kingfisher.

If you love historical fiction, you might enjoy this book or if you know nothing about the events in the Ukraine or Poland during WWII, you might enjoy learning something about this period and place in history. But if you are looking for a well-written book with well-developed characters and learning about a unique setting, this may not be the book for you.

Emotive, wonderful, simple read. Couldn't put it down.

I enjoyed this short story immensely. The drama was fast paced, and the ending was excellent. I just wish it had been longer, but that's no fault of the author's, I just didn't want it to end!

All in all highly recommended!

An excellent short story, which caused me great emotional involvement. I am very surprised the author managed to pull off such engagement in only a handful of pages.

Yet again this author ended things well, and left me extremely satisfied.

Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed this novel. I was intrigued from the beginning, and this was maintained at a good level throughout.

The premise itself was a very good one, and while I'd guessed some of the outcome, I certainly didn't guess it all.

Definitely a book I would recommend with some deep and complex undertones.

Short story about second world war survivor; listed as prize winning, but I wasn't blown away by it.
Though the story in itself isn't bad, it's well written and has a good flow, I just found the story rather confusing. To me, it never really became clear what happened; was she abused? did the guard just let her go? The latter option seems highy unlikely, since he would have gotten in trouble for that, but it is what seems to have happened.
I also found it confusing that the story seems to describe gass chambers in the fragments from the woman's memory. The camp the woman visits is Bergen-Belsen, which was a holding camp, not a destruction camp, and it didn't have any gass chambers. So, if she was held in Bergen-Belsen, she can't have this memory. There are also other points in the story which just don't seem to match with historical fact.
It just feels a lot like the author wanted to write about the second world war, put in the common horror stories about death camps and never bothered to check his facts, which, personally, I find rather annoying, and for me makes the story rather odd, since the woman's memories just don't make sense.
Also, Hamburg looks nothing like New York.