Vitamin: A Novel, Goodbye

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Goodbye, Vitamin is the type of book that could get overlooked because it’s all about the intangibles, but don’t make the mistake of overlooking this one! Though this story is about a sad and serious topic, it has a lightness to it and is amusing at times. The story is told through Ruth’s journal entries that read like little vignettes, a format that worked for me in this case because I absolutely adored Ruth’s endearing, witty, real, and relatable voice. It was the overwhelming reason I enjoyed Goodbye, Vitamin so much.

"What do I do all day? I don’t even know. I dig hair out of the bathroom drain with a chopstick. I listen to what sounds like a dog whimpering, and which turns out to be a squirrel talking to another squirrel. I watch a woman in scrubs walk by our living-room window, neatly eating a taco.

I read messages on Alzheimer’s caregiver forums – threads about Medicare, about the best brand of adult diaper, about what to do if your loved one accuses you of stealing his money. Consensus: Be calm, apologize.

On a different board, I read the messages about how to find your life’s passion. Consensus: try everything."

In addition to caring for her father (which she has a dry sense of humor about), she struggles with regular quarter-life crisis issues including a recent break-up and figuring out what she wants to do with her life. Ruth also learns more about her parents’ marriage and has a hard time processing her understanding of them as people beyond their roles as parents. Plus, there’s a spot-on segment about The Bachelor (Juan Pablo, specifically), which I greatly appreciated! Don’t miss this tiny, little gem!

Check out my blog, Sarah's Book Shelves, for more reviews.

I absolutely ADORED this novel about one woman's return home to help care for her father who has dementia. "Just one year" is the mantra that Ruth repeats upon returning home and this story wonderfully catalogs her thoughts and activities in a diary style format. I know first-hand that helping to care for someone with dementia can be a rollercoaster of emotions, feelings, or sometimes lack-therof from feels overload and this was a great representation of that and coming together as a family and loving without conditions.

I had ordered the book as part of my Book of the Month subscription, excited by the synopsis. While the novel gets off to a slow start early on, it begins to pick up the pace, and you can't help but want to continue reading. There is a tender melancholy that begins to pull you in.

Fresh off a broken engagement, Ruth quits her job and moves back home to take care of her dementia-addled father. Told via journal-style, we follow Ruth as she explores her relationships with her family, friendships, even the unsteady footing of a new romance. Ruth is not an organized storyteller so readers expecting a linear storyline might be disappointed. However, I found that it worked in the novel's favor.

I liked that we didn't dwell too deeply in the far past. I think had the author done that, I would have been taken out of the story fairly quickly. We stay in the present with Ruth, as she reflects on the end of her engagement with Joel, her re-readings of her father's diary entries. Howard, a history professor, is witty and human, and certain interactions just break your heart. As you get to the end of the novel, it begins to feel like it's speeding up, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

For a novel with a heavy subject matter, it didn't feel overwhelming or depressing. It was a fine line to quick and I think the author walked it well.

I liked how the author captured the Young family. They were not perfect but they portrayed a normal family struggling to survive and along the way they learned how to live and love again as a family. Ruth is a good daughter willing to help out her parents. Although, for me the stars of this book are Ruth's parents, Howard and Annie. Their maturity and wisdom really lends to the story.

Howard showed that although he may be dealing with Alzheimer's he was still a person. When he was teaching his small class room of students is where he shined the most. There was not a lot of detail spent in the class room, it seemed as if Howard was in the present and it seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. Than there is Annie. The fact that she went to such extremes by tossing out all of the aluminum pots and pans; thus, no more home cooked meals but yet she could be found sliding pizza under the door when Howard locks himself in his office. She was so endearing.

Ruth was the one that did the most growing in this book. She found herself again after his breakup. Not only this but she had a new outlook on life. All I have to say about this book is...Goodbye Vitamin, Hello, Love.

Going into this, I thought it sounded like a maudlin and introspective novel about yet another 'quirky' main character that would not be my jam. HOWEVER, there was something about Khong's descriptive and well paced writing that kept me turning the pages and feeling invested in Ruth and her ailing father as she comes home to help her mother cope with his Alzheimer's. The details were often crazy and lent such realness to the characters, like the way she and her best friend snack on carrot sticks and sugar, or peanuts with ranch dressing!? The crystal clear memories her father shares of her childhood also ring so true: making glass with sand in the microwave or taking the seeds off of bagels to grow in the garden like something my kids might do. She has some lovely turns of phrase: when talking about her ex boyfriend she "...loosened the jar lid, so that somebody else could open him" or remembering when he was building a house of cards, an obvious metaphor for their relationship "...trying not to breathe, not to be the one to knock it down." This was overall, a delightful surprise.

Alzheimers, cruel and insidious.

How do you tell a story of a parent who is physically healthy but cognitively no longer capable of working, doesn't recognize family members, doesn't adhere to societal norms? It is heartbreaking. Goodbye, Vitamin, a debut novel by Rachel Khong, walks this razor fine line with humor and grace to tell this story.

Ruth Young arrived at her parents home at her mothers request just after Christmas, jobless, newly broken up with her fiancé. She finds her father Howard has been leaving his pants in trees, her mother Annie views everything as a potential culprit. As the reality of her fathers Alzheimers sets in, the gravity of his condition, Ms Khong's writing really shines. She does a masterful job navigating the loss, anger, tenderness, and vulnerability to make such a difficult subject 'readable'. Most of all I found so much of this relatable, and that is the books greatest strength.

I received an advanced reader copy (eGalley) from Henry Holt & Company through NetGalley. This review reflects my honest and unbiased opinions.

In Goodbye, Vitamin, protagonist Ruth takes a break from her “real” life to move back into her parents’ home for one year to care for her father, who is suffering from dementia. Sounds bleak, right? It’s not! This is very sad material in many ways, but Khong manages to give it a lightness and humor that’s unexpected and refreshing. Khong’s writing is so spare but also beautiful and startling at the same time. Although this is a very slender novel at just over 200 pages (with plenty of white space in those pages), I found myself reading it slowly, savoring Khong’s unique phrases. Even though there is nothing difficult or inaccessible about Khong’s prose, it took me longer to read Goodbye, Vitamin than a typical 200-page book. This novel is warmhearted without being “heartwarming” (that dreaded adjective that’s usually applied to books that read like screenplays of Hallmark movies).

A blurb by Miranda July on the cover of this book says it "sneaks up on you." That's it in a nutshell. Beginning rather slowly, the plot seems to travel familiar territory -- young, disillusioned woman suffers a devastating breakup from out of the blue, moves back to the family home to help her mother care for her father recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's. But this is an original, heartfelt treatment, that by its end, had me in tears. Ruth learns more about her relationship with her father than she'd previously known through lists of memories he presents her with. Somewhere down the line, she starts providing lists of her own. One of the amazing images contained herein, is that of the brain as a box that contains one's thoughts, a box becoming overlaid with tape, rendering access more and more difficult. Was there ever a more poignant, accurate description of Alzheimer's, with its nerve deadening plaque? This one will be read again.

Goodbye, Vitamin is a slow, slow burn. And I mean like turtle-pace slow. In fact, I debated putting it down so many times in the three days it took me to read it because nothing much happens. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good slow-burn read, but if it's going to be a slow-burn, with a paper-thin plot, then I need incredible character development to be engaged. Unfortunately, Goodbye, Vitamin didn't really have this either. So, instead what I end up reading is a book about Alzheimer's that is mildly funny with likable characters who are not all that developed, with weird, random paragraphs that have nothing to do with the aforementioned paper-thin plot. It did end up getting better towards the end, but I just cannot overlook the fact that it took me forever to finish this book and I really never wanted to pick it back up once I put it down.

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong is a heartbreaking, but lovely novel about family and growing up.

This novel is written in a series of journal entries. Because of this, the content is quite jumpy and raw. The first couple pages were especially hard to follow as the narration jumps all over the place trying to set the story.

However, this novel is beautifully written. The things that the author deals with throughout are heartbreaking, frustrating, and silly at times, but so real. I liked that there wasn't a tidy ending, as it was just a year in the life of the main character.

One of my favorite features were the pages from her fathers journal where he wrote down little notes about Ruth as a child. These notes were anything from conversations they had, questions she had randomly asked, or any other situation, sprinkled with comments from the father about how amazed he was by you.

It took me a while to get into Goodbye, Vitamin. It's the story of a young woman who returns to her parents' home because her father has begun his descent into dementia. We learn about Ruth and her family, there isn't much activity, but at some point I started noticing the quirkiness of Ruth's voice and attitude. As she shares her father's journal entries about her early years, her father comes alive and we empathize with Ruth as she mourns how much her father has changed. It's particularly poignant because she hadn't been aware how much he'd noticed and valued their interaction when she was a child.

Rachel Khong has a wonderful sense of humor and her wit comes out in flashes. The dialogue, even with peripheral characters, shines through. Goodbye, Vitamin may start slow, but it is worth it. Sensitive, witty, and heartbreaking.

Anyone familiar with Khong's work in her years at Lucky Peach knows her as a playful mosaicist who builds narratives out from fragments that are beautiful in their own right. Her prose reads like a long and thoughtful email from an old friend, one battling the devastations of everyday living with humor and good-heartedness. She breaks for scientific asides, meals and talks with strangers--the pastiche that characterizes daily thought in the iPhone age.
In the end, Goodbye Vitamin feels highly disciplined, wrought from short, crisp sentences that somehow express humor and great sadness all at once.
This is a book about a daughter who goes home to take care of her parents as they brace for the ravages of Alzheimer's disease. And yet it's hilarious and hopeful. In Khong's capable hands, a book about forgetting becomes about remembering and a story about our inevitable degeneration manages to leave us uplifted.

This book. It was a struggle to read. And now a struggle to review. It is easier if you completely do not connect with a book at all. And, of course, equally easy if you connect deeply.

First, I really want to commend Khong on what she tried to do here—tackling a difficult subject with aplomb and humor. And there is a considerable number of scenes scattered throughout that tear at your heart or give you a chuckle. But the problem is all the bits between.

Goodbye Vitamin is written in a diary format, with the entries told in a stream of consciousness. If you are not a fan of that kind of writing, run away. FAST. This book will not win you over. I normally am a fan of this style, but found the thoughts a little too disjointed, even for me. It made me feel like Khong had written a full diary. The pages overflowing with emotion, ripping you to shreds with her passion, her pain, her humor. But then someone came in and ripped all the pages up. Threw them up in the air. And only a few tattered, random, pages fell back from the heavens and into the book. While I am sure Khong is anything but lazy, unfortunately, the writing tended to make me feel as though little or no effort was put into her prose. There’s things to love about the book. But most of it is missing.

With all of that said, there were enough good moments to keep me compelled and moving forward; however, had the book been much longer than it is, I would not have finished it.

I have not completely written the author off; she has talent and potential. And I would not necessarily dissuade anyone from giving it a go, just be forewarned there is no real flow or plot.

The story in “Goodby, Vitamin” follows newly-single, 30-year-old Ruth as she moves back in with her aging parents. At a surface level, she does this to help her mother care for her father, who has Alzheimer’s, but in another sense Ruth moves home because feels untethered to the life she had built away from her family.

The topics here are heavy (dementia, infidelity, alcoholism), but the author keeps things light. Ruth reflects on her circumstances with a level of dark humor that prevents the book from spiraling into despair.

Reading this book almost feels like floating in and out of a dream. The story is told in short bursts (a page here, half a page there) over the course of a year in the characters’ lives. And at less than 200 pages, this is a super fast read.

I read a review of this novel that criticised it for not knowing if it was a tragedy or comedy. And I have to agree with part of that argument. It sits in both genres comfortably. But that's not a bad thing. Far from it. Surely writing about Alzheimer's disease and making people laugh while not cheapening the experience or taking away from the trauma that the illness creates is something of a skill. Khong isn't poking fun at anyone or anything but offering a fresh perspective on a sad tale that many of us know all too well. Told in diary form from the perspective of a 30-year-old woman who has returned home for a year to help care for her ill father, it's a quiet novel that accumulates to something really quite substantial. A clever, poignant and tender, totally unique and impressive debut. I will be keenly awaiting whatever Khong does next

I can't imagine watching a parent suffer from Alzheimer's. Goodbye, Vitamin captures the little moments that make up a life in the year Ruth lives at home as her father starts to suffer from dementia. The powerful part of the book happens slowly as you transfer from reading Ruth's notes from her father about the little moments from her childhood to her own capturing of the moments of her father's life.

Caregiving is one of the hardest jobs out there, whether caring for a child or caring for an aged parent. Those little moments were beautifully showcased. At times the journal entry format was frustrating, but at the same time, there were moments when it worked perfectly. I think I missed there being a bit more depth to the characters themselves, but still, a good book.

Goodbye, Vitamin takes place over the course of a year. The year that Ruth comes home for Christmas (for the first time in a few years), her mother asks her to stay for a year to help with her father who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's. As a result, Ruth and her mother utilize natural ways of helping to combat the disease. Goodbye, Vitamin is written diary style with a direct line to all of Ruth's thoughts and feelings, and I mean all, including the random ones. It makes for a quick entertaining read. It was just the right amount of novel, as anything longer would have dragged the story out. It was cute, funny, and heartfelt. Khong does an excellent job at making you love or hate the characters, even the minor ones.

Goodbye Vitamin by Rachel Khong (debut)
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.
Release Date: July 11, 2017
Length: 208 pages

A Little Background

Single Sentence Summary
As Professor Howard Young begins losing himself to Alzheimer’s, his family must cope with their conflicted feelings of anger, fear, and love.

From the Publisher
Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, thirty-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town and arrives at her parents’ home to find that situation more complicated than she’d realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth’s mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic.

The Draw
I’m always interested in debuts and this one has had a lot of positive press. Named on best of summer lists by Elle, BuzzFeed, PopSugar, Bustle and more.
The novel’s central topic, dementia, is one on the mind of many.
Always like a shorter book!

My Thoughts

What Worked
Real life inspiration – Rachel Khong used her grandmother as inspiration to tackle a topic many of us are dealing with, Alzheimer’s disease and its affects on families. Khong knew her subject matter well; she started Goodbye Vitamin with Professor Howard Young’s disease at the delicate tipping point where much of the time he’s completely lucid, but others he’s lost and confused, needing help, but being insulted by it. Many of us have seen friends and family members at exactly this point.
A dysfunctional family – Howard’s past alcoholism and his ongoing history of infidelities, have understandably caused a great deal of anger in his wife and son. Add to that, Ruth, his 30-year old daughter who’s come home to help care for him. Ruth shares a special bond with her father and has spent most of her adult life looking the other way.

“Okay, but listen: this is why I so seldom visited. I didn’t want Linus’s claims confirmed. I wanted to preserve my memory of my perfect father. I didn’t want to know the many ways he’d hurt my mother. I didn’t want to have to pick sides. Unlike my brother, I wouldn’t have been able to do it as easily.”

Evolution of emotion – As time passes, the Alzheimer’s becomes more evident, forcing Howard’s family to struggle with forgiveness of a man not asking to be forgiven. This juxtaposition makes for some subtle, yet powerful family dynamics. With a gentle nod to the humor in Howard’s disease, Khong was able to evolve the Young family in ways that felt real to their situation and which led to some lovely, restrained emotion.

What Didn’t
Diary format – I believe I’ll be in the minority here, but I didn’t care for the format of Ruth’s narration, which was through a series of diary entries. These started with a lot of detail, helping to develop the backstory and set the stage for the rest, but devolved into a series of entries which were simply Ruth’s recordings of her dad’s days. By contrast, I loved a similar journal Howard had kept of Ruth’s childhood. His added to the emotion of Goodbye Vitamin and showed the reader Howard at his best.
The pace – For me, the story unfolded unevenly. Khong provided a lot of detail in the first half of her book, with much less in the second, where I really wanted to know more about the family’s individual feelings. The second half felt choppy.

The Final Assessment

In the end, I think the hype surrounding this book led me to expect a little more from it than it delivered. I should know better than that! Goodbye Vitamin did succeed in covering the deep sadness surrounding Alzheimer’s with a great deal of humor and healing. Many people will see themselves or someone they love in Khong’s book. Though I wasn’t a fan of the diary format, her light touch makes a difficult topic a little easier. Grade: B-

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.

Goodbye, Vitamin is heartbreakingly funny and beyond relatable. Khong's work simultaneously explores parenthood, infidelity, addiction, and the impact that alzheimer's can have on a family.

Following Ruth, a thirty-aught year old women as she returns to her parents' home in order to care for her father who has early onset alzheimer's, Goodbye Vitamin tells the tale of Ruth as she has her world turned upside-down.Told in part through exposition and in part through diary entries, Goodbye Vitamin creates a sense of lost time, and an overwhelming nostalgia for a time that never quite existed.

The novel is a quick, yet intriguing read, with biting humor and detailed emotion--perfect for the pool-side this summer, or perhaps a cool night during a summer thunderstorm. Regardless of when you read this work, you will be glad you did.

I read this beautifully-written, oddly-named book with both tears and laughter. Ruth, recently broken up with her fiancé, returns home to help her mother care for her father, who struggles with Alzheimer's. Her father, a college professor, has a history of marital infidelity and alcoholism, which has resulted in conflicting emotions for Ruth, her mother and brother, Linus. Ruth is kind, funny, forgiving and compassionate in understanding her father's limitations. She is also a fount of obscure, interesting information. There is a deep poignancy in this book despite the premise and a haunting wisdom about the memories that families cherish.

I enjoyed being swept along by some of the imagery and the language, but ultimately didn't connect much with the characters. I felt that the ending, where the narrator finds a new love who we have known for a long time she will get together with, was a bit contrived. Also, the narrator does things that are supposed to make her seem desperate, or cute, or sad, but I don't believe that the character would actually do those things. The author includes a flood of life snippets and factoids, meaning short observations of life around her, and to me they seem like padding, to bulk out the rather thin story line. I ended up feeling like the author had taken all sorts of quirky notes for years and then scattered these little observations through the book, finally making use of them regardless of the fact that they didn't mean anything in their narrative context or tell us anything about the characters. The author could have used that same space to do the heavy lifting to connect us more to her characters.

I didn't love this book, but it WAS well written and engaging. I read it in one sitting. I liked that it looked at a very serious, devastating, and difficult illness with some humor and not in a macabre manner. A daughter whose life took a turn for the worse when her fiance left her returns home to help care for her father, a former history professor, who is now suffering from Alzheimer's. The author, Rachel Khong, has a way of looking at even the darkest days with some humor. The cast of characters lend support to Ruth (the daughter) and her father, and find a way to allow him to, unofficially, continue to teach without the university knowing about it, just to give him a reason to carry one, even when he may not be making any sense. It was such a sweet thing to do for him. I would have liked an ending which gave us more information on Ruth, and the relationship she seemed to be developing with one of her father's former students. I felt hopeful for her at the end, despite all that was going on with the progression of her father's disease, but I would have liked a more finite ending. Khong adds humor to a very devastating situation and that results in a book that is actually fun and easy to read, rather than depressing.

How one deals with a debilitating disease especially of your parent can be very difficult. In this book a young woman of 30 comes home to help care for her father a former college history professor as his dementia progresses. This is a sad story, yet also filled with humor, insightful tidbits, love and caring. The ending seems a bit sudden and inconclusive.

This was a quirky book . It was a bit sad but mostly sweet as it chronicles the daughter’s year of living with her parents as her father’s Alzheimer’s takes hold . There were many cute statements about her growing up that the father had documented but then the tables are turned as they usually are in cases with Alzheimer’s and just in life where the child becomes the observer of the interesting thoughts and actions of the parent . It was also nice how the mom stuck around when it was obvious the father had strayed during their marriage. She obviously knew he did love her and she stayed to support him and the family .

This book has quickly made its way to the top of my favorites list thanks to Rachel Kong's sharp wit and ability to write meaningful and complex relationships. This is one of the most refreshing books I have had the pleasure to read in a very long time. This book is raw, funny and thought provoking. It is full of emotions. It deals with tragedy in a way that places value on the little things. This book truly highlights the beauty of family bonds. Ruth, Linus, and their parents have all had their tensions but in the face of tragedy, having each other is all that matters.

A super quick read, Goodbye Vitamin was quirky and funny, sad and hopeful.  I struggled a smidge in the middle with the topic hopping – very much a stream of consciousness feel--but the emotional weight of the story always pulled me back in.  Poignant and a little heartbreaking, (but in a warm, fuzzy way), it’s a book you’ll fall into and finish before you know it.

A stellar opening scene followed by pages deftly written. A novel with the feel of autobiography. In other words, I had a hard time believing I was reading fiction. The author conveyed the progress of Alzheimer's disease and its impact in a way that left me unable to put the book down. The characters' flawed lives impacted their struggles to integrate the impact of illness. They created normal moments, searched for answers, stumbled and dealt with loss.

An unforgettable novel about a man losing his ability to remember.

It starts with a light tone. It's written in a diary form, peppered with letter-entries from her Alzheimer ridden father's diary from when she was growing up. As it usually happens with epistolary novels, the entries get longer and reveal more and more.

It's a natural progression, without any focus on deep feelings characters dwell on. What I found especially refreshing was that Ruth, the main character, did not take herself too seriously. The characters had their particularities, and this made them human and endearing.

Despite the initial light tone, there was the expected melancholy that was later seem in the notes Ruth made. She writes about the random and about the serious, about the quirky and about the deep things. The roles eventually reverse; she starts writing her father the things he did that day, just how he used to when she was little. The transition is bitter-sweet.

The novel is funny and insightful, with some moments that are so real they could only happen in real life. It's a novel of discovery and of letting go.

I received a free e-book copy of the novel from the publisher via Net Galley. All thoughts expressed here are my own.

At it's core, this is a story of a year in the life of family and friends working together to care for the patriarch afflicted with early onset Alzheimer's. Beyond that there is an underlying story of the bonds and memories shared between father and daughter and how roles are lovingly reversed. Tender story filled with day to day personal conflicts sorted out through adversity.

I wanted to read this because it Rowan's recommended. Then I didn't want to read it because it was recommended. Then I read it because I was waiting for another book, I do not know why I was avoiding this book, I think I was afraid. It's wonderful, fast paced, funny, incite full. Read it.

I read this wonderful book on a five hour flight to Aruba. I loved her writing style. I wasn't sure what the story was all about at first, but then I couldn't put it down. The love this books message of love. It is Amazing! Anyone with aging parents or friends should read this book. This story has made me understand more and to roll with it. Omg how I loved this book. Thank you.

I was very disappointed in this book. I bought this book on my Kindle because of the excellent review in the NY Times Book Review section and the excellent review in Real Simple Magazine. Sadly this book did not live up to my expectation and I would not recommend it!

I loved this book. I lost my grandpa 5 years ago to dementia, and it was a heartbreaking thing to witness This book was real, and focused on continuing to live while loving someone with age related mental decline, as well as live after a break up.

My biggest complaint is it wasn't long enough.

A sweet, affecting novel about a young woman who returns to home after a breakup and her efforts to help care for her father, who is succumbing to dementia. The quippy tone and recurrence to trivia echo the literary fiction of the 90s and aughts and particularly the style of Lorrie Moore.

Rachel Khong’s first novel is an often funny daily record of a woman who has just turned 30 and been discarded by her fiancé. Home from San Francisco to somewhere in southern California for Christmas, Ruth Young decides to stay and help her mother cope with her father’s descent into dementia. Howard has just been removed from teaching in a college history department. His wife, Ruth’s mother, Annie has quit cooking, and Howard more or less has qui eating—or eating anything other than bread.

Annie has thrown out all the aluminum pots, and Ruth is maximizing crucigerous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, etc.) and piling on jellyfish concotions, though both know that changing diet and cookware is not going to reverse Alzheimer’s—nor does it seem to slow the degradation of memory and identity.

Annie has a lot of resentment stored up from Howard’s philandering with the added frustration of not being able to confront him, since he doesn’t remember his liaisons. Ruth did not want to see what was going on, either her father’s flames or that she was being replaced by her fiancé, Joel. Her brother, Linus, sided with their mother, but sought to stay away from his parents, though reluctantly aiding Ruth.

Ruth is inveigled by her father’s protégé, Theo, into fooling Howard into offering a seminar in California history without the knowledge of the department chair who has removed Howard from teaching. I have to say that I find it difficult to suspend disbelief in a group of graduate students spending the time and energy on such a seminar, given that graduate students tend to be very focused on their careers (and real classes).

If I were less entertained by them, I’d also question that the contents could be a diary. It’s not that too much happens in any single entry, but that what Ruth inscribes doesn’t strike me as what a diary-writer would write.

The mix of poignant and funny behavior (verbal and nonverbal) of her father disappearing into dementia is counterpoised by the too-cute device of a record he kept of Ruth learning to talk, learning to read, and asking him tough questions. He doles out a page at a time of this “Kids Say the Darnedest Things” material to her (though I wonder how he remembers when the next dose is due…)

Ruth learns some things about herself, and more than she wanted to know about her parents’ troubled marital history over the course of a year with their wreckages. There are no happy endings for chronicles of Alzheimer’s, so I don’t blame Khong for the lack of a dramatic finish. I could contend that there are small epiphanies, however. And the snippets of diary entries makes the story of decline fairly easy to read.

Entirely BTW, I think the title would have better incorporated the other element of Howard’s remarks on taking his vitamins: “Hello water, goodbye vitamin,” though this would still be mysterious to readers until the passage where it is recorded, late in the text.

3.5 Stars. "Just the year is all it will be."

GOODBYE VITAMIN is a light read about a heavy subject matter.....Alzheimer's.

It is about a husband/father with declining "lapses in memory".... a forgotten betrayal... a special love for daughter Ruth... and the various ways family members keep him eating, involved, happy and active ....some are so very touching.

It is about ....and a bit heavy....on daughter Ruth's personal life, her past and most recent relationship...the breakup...and her reconnection with an old girlfriend.

You'll also find here quite a few healthy eating tips and fun bits of trivia, BUT...honestly, what I really wanted and expected was more time with dad in the storyline....like the memories with mom.....like the childhood conversations with Ruth from the little red notebook....they were wonderful and ended all too soon.

Very decent fictional debut; but (for me) the story lost its focus with too much time spent away from dad. Perhaps that was the point....to show that caregivers have lives too....I'm not sure.

This was one of my favorite books I read last year. If you are close to someone who has suffered from memory loss, you'll read about the dad's struggles with his memory and likely feel much like I did: commiseration and longing and also some peace at being seen.

I'll read anything Rachel Kong writes. Highly recommend.

I loved this book. I lost my grandpa 5 years ago to dementia, and it was a heartbreaking thing to witness This book was real, and focused on continuing to live while loving someone with age related mental decline, as well as live after a break up.

My biggest complaint is it wasn't long enough.

A sweet, affecting novel about a young woman who returns to home after a breakup and her efforts to help care for her father, who is succumbing to dementia. The quippy tone and recurrence to trivia echo the literary fiction of the 90s and aughts and particularly the style of Lorrie Moore.

Rachel Khong’s first novel is an often funny daily record of a woman who has just turned 30 and been discarded by her fiancé. Home from San Francisco to somewhere in southern California for Christmas, Ruth Young decides to stay and help her mother cope with her father’s descent into dementia. Howard has just been removed from teaching in a college history department. His wife, Ruth’s mother, Annie has quit cooking, and Howard more or less has qui eating—or eating anything other than bread.

Annie has thrown out all the aluminum pots, and Ruth is maximizing crucigerous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, etc.) and piling on jellyfish concotions, though both know that changing diet and cookware is not going to reverse Alzheimer’s—nor does it seem to slow the degradation of memory and identity.

Annie has a lot of resentment stored up from Howard’s philandering with the added frustration of not being able to confront him, since he doesn’t remember his liaisons. Ruth did not want to see what was going on, either her father’s flames or that she was being replaced by her fiancé, Joel. Her brother, Linus, sided with their mother, but sought to stay away from his parents, though reluctantly aiding Ruth.

Ruth is inveigled by her father’s protégé, Theo, into fooling Howard into offering a seminar in California history without the knowledge of the department chair who has removed Howard from teaching. I have to say that I find it difficult to suspend disbelief in a group of graduate students spending the time and energy on such a seminar, given that graduate students tend to be very focused on their careers (and real classes).

If I were less entertained by them, I’d also question that the contents could be a diary. It’s not that too much happens in any single entry, but that what Ruth inscribes doesn’t strike me as what a diary-writer would write.

The mix of poignant and funny behavior (verbal and nonverbal) of her father disappearing into dementia is counterpoised by the too-cute device of a record he kept of Ruth learning to talk, learning to read, and asking him tough questions. He doles out a page at a time of this “Kids Say the Darnedest Things” material to her (though I wonder how he remembers when the next dose is due…)

Ruth learns some things about herself, and more than she wanted to know about her parents’ troubled marital history over the course of a year with their wreckages. There are no happy endings for chronicles of Alzheimer’s, so I don’t blame Khong for the lack of a dramatic finish. I could contend that there are small epiphanies, however. And the snippets of diary entries makes the story of decline fairly easy to read.

Entirely BTW, I think the title would have better incorporated the other element of Howard’s remarks on taking his vitamins: “Hello water, goodbye vitamin,” though this would still be mysterious to readers until the passage where it is recorded, late in the text.

3.5 Stars. "Just the year is all it will be."

GOODBYE VITAMIN is a light read about a heavy subject matter.....Alzheimer's.

It is about a husband/father with declining "lapses in memory".... a forgotten betrayal... a special love for daughter Ruth... and the various ways family members keep him eating, involved, happy and active ....some are so very touching.

It is about ....and a bit heavy....on daughter Ruth's personal life, her past and most recent relationship...the breakup...and her reconnection with an old girlfriend.

You'll also find here quite a few healthy eating tips and fun bits of trivia, BUT...honestly, what I really wanted and expected was more time with dad in the storyline....like the memories with mom.....like the childhood conversations with Ruth from the little red notebook....they were wonderful and ended all too soon.

Very decent fictional debut; but (for me) the story lost its focus with too much time spent away from dad. Perhaps that was the point....to show that caregivers have lives too....I'm not sure.

This was one of my favorite books I read last year. If you are close to someone who has suffered from memory loss, you'll read about the dad's struggles with his memory and likely feel much like I did: commiseration and longing and also some peace at being seen.

I'll read anything Rachel Kong writes. Highly recommend.

I purchased this book through the Book of the Month club and honestly wasn't sure what to expect. It did start a little slow but once the storytelling style shifted, I was hooked! It was a very short, sweet, funny, heartbreaking look at Alzheimer's.

I just finished the book, I thought it was an ok book. I liked the story being written in journal form, but I was confused when it showed specific dates all the way until August, and then finished, month to month. It almost seemed like the author was running out of time to write the book, so she rushed through the end of it.

I read a review of this novel that criticised it for not knowing if it was a tragedy or comedy. And I have to agree with part of that argument. It sits in both genres comfortably. But that's not a bad thing. Far from it. Surely writing about Alzheimer's disease and making people laugh while not cheapening the experience or taking away from the trauma that the illness creates is something of a skill. Khong isn't poking fun at anyone or anything but offering a fresh perspective on a sad tale that many of us know all too well. Told in diary form from the perspective of a 30-year-old woman who has returned home for a year to help care for her ill father, it's a quiet novel that accumulates to something really quite substantial. A clever, poignant and tender, totally unique and impressive debut. I will be keenly awaiting whatever Khong does next

Goodbye, Vitamin is heartbreakingly funny and beyond relatable. Khong's work simultaneously explores parenthood, infidelity, addiction, and the impact that alzheimer's can have on a family.

Following Ruth, a thirty-aught year old women as she returns to her parents' home in order to care for her father who has early onset alzheimer's, Goodbye Vitamin tells the tale of Ruth as she has her world turned upside-down.Told in part through exposition and in part through diary entries, Goodbye Vitamin creates a sense of lost time, and an overwhelming nostalgia for a time that never quite existed.

The novel is a quick, yet intriguing read, with biting humor and detailed emotion--perfect for the pool-side this summer, or perhaps a cool night during a summer thunderstorm. Regardless of when you read this work, you will be glad you did.

"Goodbye, Vitamin” is tender novel about an imperfect family that learns to move past a painful betrayal and strengthen their relationship. The book is written in a journal entry format and readers access the thoughts of Ruth, a 30-something who is trying to deal with her father’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, family drama, and her recent breakup with her long-term boyfriend. “Goodbye, Vitamin” is at times a fun and quirky read and at times an incredibly insightful and heart-wrenching mediation on love, loss, and memory. I highly recommend!

The narrator’s father is slowly deteriorating due to Alzheirmer’s. This horrible disease (along with every other form of dementia) is an emotional and devastating attack on all concerned, and people will certainly react differently to this book depending on their personal connections, experiences and fears.

I am very fortunate to be able to say no one in my family has ever suffered from such a disease – all of my relatives who lived into their 80’s and 90’s were mentally sharp to the day they passed on. Too many people are not that lucky.

So I can only react to the book as someone who, I hope, doesn’t have a foot in the race, as we used to say. Parts of it are funny, parts of it are heartbreaking. Parts of it are annoying. I was, in a way, glad that the author did not make the father into a saint, but then, at the same time, I was annoyed at what a jerk he had often been. I also felt a certain disdain for the narrator as we soon learn that she ruined her life by quitting college to follow a boy to another part of the country. My dear, you are an idiot. Of course, that did not turn out well. Gee, what a surprise. And now she drinks too much. She also is part of a plan to try and fool her father in a truly bizarre way that I won’t reveal. And how could that possibly go well?

I’m afraid I had little patience for the narrator. I was also surprised as to how irrelevant and almost invisible the mother remained. Just as the narrator seems to think she herself is not important, she also regards her mother as such.

So while various vignettes were touching, the overall story left me distant and uninvolved.

Ernest Hemingway defined courage as "grace under pressure". Thirty year old Ruth Young exemplifies this adage, as she comes home for a year, in order to help her working mother, take care of her beloved father, diagnosed with Alzheimer Disease. At a crossroads in her life, Ruth has been unexpectedly jilted by her fiance and quits her job.

Her father Howard, was a well loved and respected history professor. Her mother substitute teaches in the high school and "empties the pantries of foods shes deemed harmful" Alzheimer is a heartbreaking disease but this real and relateable story is neither maudlin or cloying. What makes it shine are the complexities of the relationship of each of these characters. It is written in diary form as Ruth chronologically recalls the events in her families life from December to December. There are many moments of beauty and happiness mixed in with the sadness. Due to his rapid decline, Howard is unceremoniously let go of his professorship. Howard's students want him to have a purpose again, and in an act of both appreciation and love, a small group band together, in order to take his fictitious class California History, Pre-European Contact to the Present. The many places off campus, they need to find, in order to meet as a class and hide from the college administrators are priceless. So are the touching father/daughter memories that Howard jotted down and saved for Ruth. If you are looking for both a moving and satisfying story look no further.

I definitely understand why there are mixed reviews – I think this book will end up just not being for everyone. I think a big part of that is the writing style; while some may not like it, it was Khong’s short chapters in a diary entry-like format that was perfect for me and my reading slump. While the style and format of the writing was an aspect I enjoyed, I didn’t always like Ruth’s almost stream of conscious narration.

Goodbye, Vitamin I think is unique because it doesn’t seem plot driven to me yet it also doesn’t seem strongly character driven (though I would assume it is). I think I’m confused because while I liked Ruth, she didn’t seem very fleshed out.

The plot is a mixture of Ruth trying to re-find herself after her engagement is broken off and Ruth demonstrating familial devotion when she moves back home for a short time with the intention of helping take care of her father, who has Alzheimer’s.

I think Buzzfeed’s review sums it up pretty well: “One of those rare books that is both devastating and light-hearted, heartfelt, and joyful.”

This book is devastating to read about because it’s an interesting look into Alzheimer’s. However, it does somehow have a light-hearted and joyful tone about it, which I think comes from Ruth reconnecting with her father and helping make new memories even he doesn’t end up remembering them; but Ruth will and her mother and her brother.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It’s a short and sweet book that helped remind me that life is about all the little moments and that it’s important to remember them all.

You can find all my reviews on my wordpress blog Sorry, I'm Booked