The Borrowed Life Of Frederick Fife – Anna Johnston

We all know that I love a book with an older protagonist, so of course I jumped at the chance to read The Borrowed Life Of Frederick Fife. (That it came in the most gorgeous PR package from Penguin Books Australia with some delightful treats didn’t hurt its chances of making it to the top of the to-read pile, either.)

Frederick Fife has lived a lot of life, and lost a lot along the way, including his best friend, his wife, and his unborn child. He never lost his kind heart, though, nor his determination to make the best of every situation. A strange series of coincidences leads to a case of mistaken identity, that sees him installed in a nursing home (instead of the brink of homelessness) and ‘borrowing’ the life of a man named Bernard.

Frederick has a unique opportunity to fix some things that have gone wrong in a stranger’s life – in exchange, he gets a warm bed and three square meals a day. But how long can he keep up the charade?

I won’t lie, I have mixed feelings about The Borrowed Life Of Frederick Fife. I really wanted to love it, but I found it danced too close to the line between delightful and depressing for me to truly enjoy it. Frederick is a wonderful character, and I’d love to sit down with him over a cup of tea and a biscuit, but the realities of mistreatment in aged care facilities and the lack of social safety net for older people hit just a bit too hard. The story was tempered with too much sadness to match the joy of a book like The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared (content warning for grief, cancer, addiction, and miscarriage).

As always, though, The Borrowed Life Of Frederick Fife is a wonderful reminder of the rich and complex inner lives of older people, and the importance of representing them well in fiction.

Read The Borrowed Life Of Frederick Fife on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)