Frederick Fife is a down on his luck widower. He hasn’t been able to pay his rent and is being evicted from his apartment. Before packing away his things, Fred takes a walk to a park where he sees a man that appears to be dead sitting in a wheelchair. As Fred wheels the dead man towards a nearby group of seniors that the man may have been a part of, Fred and the man are attacked by seagulls. Fred stumbles, falls and hits his head, and drops the dead man into a flowing river. He watches in silence as the body is washed downstream. Fred is then swept up in a case of mistaken identity that results in him living in a senior home, wearing another man’s clothes and adult incontinence pants, and playing balloon volleyball. The only person who calls him Fred is an Alzheimer’s patient that mistakes him for a long-dead brother.
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife touches on the pain that family feels when coping with Alzheimer’s and cancer and is a tapestry of bittersweet memories, dark humor, and occasional silliness as Fred is forced into another man’s life. This book would be great for readers who enjoyed A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson, and Gravity Is the Thing by Jaclyn Moriarty.
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