Beatrix & Fred
A luminous, wise and blackly funny triumph. I adored it. - Toni Jordan
Beatrix is a loner. She has a love-hate relationship with her one friend Ray, a hate-hate relationship with everyone else in her office and a genuine connection with a stuffed canary named Horatio. She drinks alone far too much. Lately she’s been finding the edge of the railway platform dangerously seductive.
Her life needs to change, and when she crosses paths with an old woman who seems to be stalking her, that’s exactly what happens. Eighty-something Fred is smart, earthy, funny and not the harmless elderly lady she appears to be. She is, in fact, quite literally something else—but what?
When something happens to Ray, Fred decides to reveal herself. And Beatrix realises she has some agonising choices to make.
Beatrix and Fred is an off-kilter love story wrapped in a satisfying layer of moral complexity and tied up with a ribbon of sheer fun. Warm, witty, more than slightly weird—it takes the age-old question of what it is to be human beyond humanity itself.
