Goodbye, Vitamin

Description

'A beautifully written coming-of-age debut, dreamy and funny ... flawless' Independent 'Khong is a magician... Brilliant' Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies 'Khong's first novel sneaks up on you - just like life, illness and heartbreak. And love. A million small, human and often deeply funny details gather force to tell a tale that is ultimately, incredibly poignant' Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man Ruth is thirty and her life is falling apart: she and her fiance are moving house, but he's moving out to live with another woman; her career is going nowhere; and then she learns that her father, a history professor beloved by his students, has Alzheimer's. At Christmas, her mother begs her to stay on and help. For a year. Goodbye, Vitamin is the wry, beautifully observed story of a woman at a crossroads, as Ruth and her friends attempt to shore up her father's career; she and her mother obsess over the ambiguous health benefits - in the absence of a cure - of dried jellyfish supplements and vitamin pills; and they all try to forge a new relationship with the brilliant, childlike, irascible man her father has become. ?'Biting, funny and poignant and makes you wish you'd thought of writing it first' Stylist, '50 Unmissable Books' 'A deceptively complex tale of dementia and its impact on a family ... Like a chain of fairy lights in the darkness' Financial Times 'One of the funniest elegiac novels I have ever read' David Leavitt, author of The Lost Language of Cranes

Rachel Khong studied at Yale and the University of Florida. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Believer, Pitchfork, Village Voice and Lucky Peach. In 2013, she was named one of Refinery29's 30 under 30. Goodbye, Vitamin is her first novel.

'Goodbye, Vitamin builds with humor, gusto and such deceptive lightness that the reader wonders, at its devastating end, how debut author Rachel Khong managed to pull it off so beautifully. The only possible answer is that Khong is a magician, and we are lucky to fall under her spell at the beginning of her brilliant writing life' -- Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies 'Rachel Khong's first novel sneaks up on you - just like life, illness and heartbreak. And love. A million small, human and often deeply funny details gather force to tell a tale that is ultimately, incredibly poignant' -- Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man 'There's beauty, humour and absurdity in even the most tragic situation as Rachel Khong demonstrates in Goodbye, Vitamin' * Good Housekeeping * 'Funny and tragic, heart-breaking and life-affirming, it reminds you that in the end, that's all there is - countless passing moments' * Grazia * 'A tragi-comic story about holding a family together when life wants to break them apart and finding yourself when you thought you were completely lost. I absolutely loved this book' * RED * 'Nuanced exploration of family love and remembrance...A contemporary take on the coming-of-age tale...It's sweet without being saccharine, and moving without feeling depressed.' * Refinery29 * 'A deft, funny and very moving account of all kinds of loss' * The Big Issue * 'Told in captivating glimpses and drawn from a deep well of insight, humor, and unexpected tenderness, Goodbye, Vitamin pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one's footing in this life.' * Publishers Lunch * 'Goodbye, Vitamin is a darkly funny debut novel about love, loss, and heartbreak.' * Popsugar *