"The word testify," you said, "comes from testicles. We get random trivia in the middle of chapters about everything from whales to California trees to what contains aluminium to: Goodbye, Vitamin reads like a random stream of comedy sketches, lacking any kind of focus or direction. One minute, Ruth is dealing with her father's erratic mood swings the next minute, she is with her best friend and, quickly after, we have jumped back to an anecdote from her childhood. It's written in what seems, at first glance, like diary entries, but the narrative jumps all over the place and lacked any kind of cohesion. I really struggled to connect with the narrator or her family, and this made it difficult to get through, despite the length.
It's a quick read, rolling in at just over 200 pages, but it is messy, often disconnected and very, very random. It's a book about thirty-year-old Ruth and how she deals with a break-up and her father's Alzheimers diagnosis over the course of one year. Maybe my disconnect with the humour led into all the other problems I had. It wasn't my only issue with Goodbye, Vitamin, but it was probably the biggest one. I always feel that humour is one of the most subjective aspects of a book, and the style here didn't work for me at all. I realise I’m in the minority, but I just didn’t find this book funny.
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