When Lemons Give You Life
Author: Anna Johnston
Original Publication: 2026
Genre: Fiction
Griffith Barlow is a retired Michelin-starred chef who lives in the world’s most lackadaisical old folks’ home. He’s in there for dementia and hasn’t spoken aloud to anyone in quite some time. His much-younger sister, Lisa, visits him out of obligation and is a wonderful person, but they were never close, even before Griff’s diagnosis. What nobody knows is that Griff is faking his dementia, for reasons we come to understand as the story progresses. Indeed, most of the lies that he’s tired of are his own.
When Griff decides he’s done with his life – the soul-crushing grief, the guilt, the lies, the boredom, and the God-awful food they serve in his nursing home, he sneaks into the home’s industrial kitchen to make himself one last homemade lemon tart. The smell attracts a curious resident, who mistakes Griff for his mother, and Griff feels his empty heart fill just a little for the first time in a very long time. He starts cooking in secret, and the residents, tasting real homemade food instead of the “beige slop”, as Griff calls it, start to come alive.
Many people think love is the answer to the world’s problems. Few know it’s actually potato.
Without giving too much more away – and there is SO much more to this story – we’re let in on why Griff is the way he is, why his relationship with his sister is so fractured, his sister’s new midlife relationship and news that might ruin everything, and why Griff faked his dementia (his beloved husband, Beau, had early-onset Alzheimer’s. No care facility would let Griff move in and care for him, and it ripped Griff’s heart out every time he had to leave and Beau would cry, terrified, so he had himself diagnosed with dementia and moved in to be with Beau until his death.) That’s not a spoiler. The “why” isn’t as important as the “what’s next”, here. Needless to say, he can’t let anyone in his life know that he’s faking – they’d have a LOT of questions – but his hand may be forced if he wants to make things right before it’s too late.
Fun Fact: Anna Johnston’s first novel, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife, became an international bestseller that is waiting on a Netflix movie adaptation. As of September 2026, it is in the development phases.
Bother if: Full disclosure: I cried no fewer than six times while reading this, with tears streaming down my face. It’s…heartwarming. The love story of caring for someone with memory loss is as good as any I’ve ever read. It’s a lovely story, with wonderful and vividly imagined characters, and the ending is rewarding and satisfying. It also contains ADHD representation and LGBTQ+ representation, both done very well.
Don’t bother if: If “heartwarming” isn’t your bag because you’re a proud grinch, I can see skipping this one. It also details some of the upsetting realities of caring for a spouse who is rapidly losing who he is. Johnston’s writing ripped my heart out for poor Beau, which is to say nothing about Griff, who is devastated by the loss of his husband. Losing the love of your life while they are still alive is one of the worst tortures imaginable.
I reach for the sugar bowl. There’s a faded scrap of music paper stuck crookedly to the edge, the staves barely visible beneath his scrawl: SUGAR. Griff likes two. You like one. Don’t forget. He put them everywhere when he’d first learned his fate. The fridge is littered with them – little compositions of panic.
