Goodbye, Vitamin

by Rachel Khong

2 of 5 stars 1 rating • 0 reviews • 1 shelved
Book cover for Goodbye, Vitamin

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'A beautifully written coming-of-age debut, dreamy and funny ... flawlessIndependent

'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 fiancé 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

  • ISBN10 1471159485
  • ISBN13 9781471159480
  • Publish Date 1 June 2017
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 1 May 2023
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Simon & Schuster Ltd
  • Imprint Scribner UK
  • Edition Export
  • Format Paperback (UK Trade)
  • Pages 208
  • Language English