Goodbye Vitamin (2017) is set in California in the Young family’s home.
The narrator, Ruth Young, is at her parent’s place for the holidays. Her mother,
Annie, a retired teacher, has virtually stopped cooking in order to feed on
vitamins. Her father, Howard, also a former teacher, over the past year, has
become a grumpy old man with dementia.
With her brother Linus, and good friend, Bonnie, Ruth begins a crusade to
learn as much as possible about Alzheimer’s and memory loss, in order to find
anything that can benefit her father’s deteriorating mind and health.
During their efforts, Ruth takes observation notes of the things her father
says and does during the course of his day: ‘Today
you put sand in the microwave. You said you were making glass … Today you
washed your shoelaces.’ He forgets to turn off the tap; he peels a bunch of
bananas and doesn’t eat them; and he paints a bar of soap with nail polish.
Ruth reads that protein in jellyfish, eaten twice a week, reduces a
person’s likelihood of developing dementia. She telephones her local stores to
ask if they sell jellyfish protein. When she finds it, Ruth makes jellyfish
salad, jellyfish soup, jellyfish fritters, jellyfish pickles, jellyfish
spaghetti, jellyfish noodles, and jellyfish sauce.
From one day to the next, her father’s ‘condition’ goes from being
managable to being ‘scary.’ She starts to remember the past; the days of her
childhood, long before her brilliant father had dementia.
This is an interesting, well-written novel, partly in the form of a diary,
and partly in the form of an observational checklist, as well as the narrative
of a family’s way of coping with change, tolerance, wellness, memories, and
memory loss.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom
(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest
Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan
Curse (2009).
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