The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife: A Novel

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of death, pregnancy loss, addiction, illness, substance use, and child death.

The protagonist, 82-year-old Fred, is alone and facing eviction when the novel opens. He maintains a sense of humor about both his circumstances and his age, indicating that he is a positive person who strives to make the most of any situation in which he finds himself. Kind-hearted and caring, Fred is plagued by grief over the death of his wife of many years, Dawn. Though her death was not recent, he is frequently nostalgic about the wonderful life they had together and constantly praises her warmth, emphasizing how much meaning she brought to his life, developing the theme of The Importance of Familial Bonds. Fred’s longing for the kind of connection and kinship he once had with his wife is a significant source of both motivation and conflict for his character, particularly as his grief over her death is compounded by the ongoing guilt he harbors surrounding the pregnancy loss Dawn experienced decades earlier. Fred remains convinced that he should have been able to prevent the

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