Book Review: Goodbye, Vitamin

I approached this book club pick with mixed emotions. I wanted to read it because it deals with the topic of dementia, yet I worried it would hit too close to home. Although my mother has dementia, I've never lived nearby to experience her struggles firsthand. I'm not close enough to see the daily differences, the mood swings, or the memory lapses. Moreover, my father assures us that he has her care well-in-hand. There will come a day when it morphs into something beyond him, but at this point, she is most at ease being primarily in his presence. I thought the book would tug at my heart strings more. In the end, I much preferred Lisa Genova's heart-breaking Still Alice to Rachel Khong's introspective Goodbye, Vitamin.

Thirty-year-old Ruth is reeling from the loss of her engagement when her mother approaches and asks her to spend a year living at home. Ruth quits her job to help care for her father, a history professor who has recently lost his own job due to his growing dementia symptoms. Life at home is tricky to maneuver. The lingering residue from her father's infidelity haunts her mother, while Ruth struggles to make sense of where her life is headed.

I think the story center, with its focus on Ruth's perspective of her father's decline, was a valid one. However, it felt disjointed and uneven. For one thing, the reader is constantly handed token tidbits of trivia and sideline observations in such a random manner. (For example, a comment on a mother who has named her children Sandy and Katrina, possibly after hurricanes, or a woman in the supermarket curling a bone as if it's a barbell.) Moreover, the stream-of-consciousness writing was somehow wearying, instead of satisfying. It is presented as journal entries, yet doesn't read like a journal. I'm curious to know why the author began the book using individual dates and then thirty pages from the end switched to monthly headings and more general snippets of memory, beginning almost every paragraph with "Today I ..." or "Today you ..." It felt like the author began to grow weary of it herself (although another book club member suggested this was a way for her to signal the shift in the disease to a more general experience, capturing snippets of moments or memories as they appear - and that sounded plausible).

If you are looking for a book with a clear direction and plot line, you might want to try something else. Still, the book didn't feel like a total loss. It was a quick and easy read. I just wasn't sure exactly where it was headed or what it hoped to accomplish. Thankfully, I felt more positive about the book after discussing it with the others (hearing other insights often triggers a better understanding).