The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston
Imagine this.
Your name is Fred. You are 82 years old. You have outlived all your family, friends and money. Tonight, you will be homeless.
Walking in the park, you come across your doppelganger. He’s in a wheelchair, and he seems to be dead. Spying the nursing home bus a short distance away, you begin to push the wheelchair in that direction. It’s hot outside, so you remove your jacket – with your wallet and ID in the pocket – and put it in the dead guy’s lap.
On the way, a mishap occurs. The wheelchair tips. The passenger rolls downhill into a fast-flowing river, along with your jacket. You also fall.
A nurse from the bus helps you up and puts you in the wheelchair, and doesn’t believe you when you tell her you aren’t Bernard, that Bernard has floated down the river. Quickly, you realize the story you are telling is being chalked up to Bernard’s dementia. Over the next few hours and days, you make several attempts to set the record straight, but no one takes you seriously.
Bernard’s bed at the nursing home is comfortable. The food is better than you’ve eaten in years. You make friends.
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife is about the consequences of these events. I struggled with the first third of the book because of some distraction on my part regarding names, more emphasis than in most books on gastrointestinal functions of the elderly and because I was reading it as if it were one of my drafts, reviewing it through the filter of my editor’s and writing coaches’ preferences (which, by the way, don’t always agree with each other)!
Once I got over that bit of silliness, I began to care about the characters and was hooked. The author’s sense of humor grew on me with the rest of the story. Even before I read her bio, it was clear she was writing what she knows with respect to grief for both the departed and the living who have been lost to dementia. There is one subplot that had me wanting to go back to the beginning to see if I saw a certain twist coming, but I kept going forward and am glad I did.
I read this for a bookclub meeting that, at the last minute, I wasn’t able to attend. Good book club discussion would center on the obvious question. What would you do in the same overall circumstances and in the little situations that come up every day? Would you do what Fred did when he overheard a staff conversation about how it didn’t make sense Bernard was no longer incontinent overnight? Would you take as long he did to search Bernard’s room and examine his effects to learn more about his life?
I would recommend this book as one that entertains, provokes empathy, and makes you think without getting too deep. It will also teach you some Australian slang and colloquialisms.
Next Up: Where The Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe, Fever Beach by Carl Hiassen, or the next book club selection which is The Nurse’s Secret by Amanda Skenandore. I also have The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown checked out from the library. Somehow I reserved it too early for a future book club meeting. I prefer to read right before the meeting so I remember more details.