Kingfisher – Rozie Kelly

READ FOR WOMEN’S PRIZE

An unnamed creative writing academic becomes increasingly drawn to an older colleague, a poet he calls his kingfisher. Their attraction develops and disrupts his established life with his partner Michael. As he moves between these two worlds, illness affecting those close to him changes the course of his relationships and the life he had imagined for himself.

You don’t often see the in-between, do you? You don’t often see the part where you walk in silence and don’t touch one another, the part where the shards from an explosion float to the ground, and you have to get up again the next day. The part where you put the washing on and go to work and pretend everything is fine and all the while your chest is heaving from your invisible wounds. You see the chasms of heartbreak, the wet cheeks and dramatic sobs and hard goodbyes, but you don’t see the agonised conversations with friends: the fabrications of a narrative that doesn’t show us in our horrible, fractured, human light.

RACHEL
● Kingfisher is about grief and desire, and the agency we have in how we handle those emotions. The unnamed narrator is not an overly emotional person, and I liked this perspective on grief. “I don’t get angry, I feel empty,” he says, and that’s a good summation of the book. There is a sense of subdued passion and empty grief throughout.

The narrator is also battling identity. As a gay man in a relationship, he suddenly finds himself desiring a woman, the poet, and this becomes a turning point in the way he examines both his life and work. His relationships with the other key characters, his boyfriend, his mother, his friend Jess and the poet, are all uniquely portrayed. They never felt clichéd or borrowed, but genuine and realistically complex.

It’s not exactly a cheery read, so may not be for everyone, but for those who appreciate careful construction, strong character development and a slow-burn plot, this is one to pick up.

Published 2025
Saraband / Contraband
212 pages