It’s like a collection of incidents and key events that form a particular period in a person’s life.

Her personal writings filter out the dull, uninteresting moments of life to reveal the odd, wonderful and quirky things that often are what we remember the most. To be fair, it’s more about Ruth and her life, than the Alzheimer’s that’s taken up residence in their family. GOODBYE, VITAMIN is a humorous, endearing novel. To bring a semblance of normalcy and order to his life, Ruth conspires with his student Theo to organize a fake course attended by a small group of students who want to support their professor. This novel is Ruth’s diary of the year she spends with her parents, dealing with her personal failures and the horrible reality of her father’s illness.

Ruth, who has fond memories of her parents, especially her father, had been avoiding visiting home so she doesn’t have to confront the reality of his ailing health and her parents’ declining marriage. As a result of his Alzheimer’s he is no longer welcome at the university where he worked as a beloved professor. During her Christmas visit, Ruth’s mother requests her to come stay for a year and help with her father’s declining health.

Ruth is thirty and recently disengaged from the man she thought she’d marry (as they pack up to move to a new home, he packs his things separately and tells her at the very end that he’s breaking up with her and moving to live with another woman).

Goodbye vitamin