Just before 80-year-old Fred is evicted from his tiny apartment, he finds brief respite in a nearby park on a lake near a small town in Australia. This is where we meet Fred in the humorous, yet touching novel, “The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife," by Anna Johnston.
At the lake’s edge, Fred approaches a man in a wheelchair. Always a friendly person, Fred begins a conversation but realizes the old man is dead. Fred’s first instinct is to wheel the man up the slope to the bus that is filled with nursing home residents boarding the bus for the home, after a day at the park.
Fred loses control of the wheelchair, and the dead man named Bernard falls into the lake and floats away. While Fred attempts to rescue Bernard, the nursing home attendants chastise Fred, who they think is Bernard, for getting his wheelchair so close to the water. They usher Fred onto the bus, ignoring Fred’s protests that he is not Bernard. As it happens, Fred and Bernard are very similar in appearance. The nursing home staff attributes Fred’s agitation to “Bernard’s” early stage of Alzheimer’s.
Fred begins life at the nursing home seamlessly because, as he notes, older people are invisible to the young and look the same. He quickly learns to mimic some of Bernard’s ailments to avoid suspicion. Nurses believe that “Bernard” is improving because he is a kinder and happier gentleman than before.
Fred’s life story unravels as his days in the nursing home unfold. He is patient with Alzheimer’s residents because his mother suffered from the same illness. He encourages a nurse's aide to take a chance on love with another staff member. He reflects on his years as a soldier when a Vietnamese nurse helps him with his daily needs. He is accepting of his financial losses because medical expenses kept his wife alive longer.
When Fred stages a wedding for a dementia patient who wants to remarry his wife, he does so out of the love he had for his own wife. Fred misses her acutely. He was unable to let go of a meal she made which had been in his freezer for 10 years, unwilling to give up her last gift to him.
Things take a turn when Bernard’s estranged and angry grown daughter shows up. Not having seen her “father” for 30 years, she cannot believe the warm, sweet person he has become.
Although Fred feels guilty for “borrowing a life,” he is unsure how to turn things around since no one ever believes him when he tells them his own name and story.
With some suspension of belief, Fred, his daughter, the staff and residents of the nursing home learn to live together and grow in love and kindness, thanks to Fred’s genuine care and respect for everybody.
“The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife,” a debut novel by Anna Johnston, is an uplifting book even as it addresses themes of loneliness, poverty, and illness. The short chapters are readable and the characters and their situations are relatable.
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