This is sadly lovely book. For me, it was summed up by the line, “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this. This job is for someone purer of heart.” Caring for children, caring for spouses, caring for parents, all are jobs that are for someone purer of heart, but jobs that we carry on doing regardless.

While the subject of this story might not appeal to everyone, let me just share this with you: Ruth, daughter of Howard (whose mind is slowly deteriorating thanks to Alzheimer's disease), assists some of Howard's college students (he is a respected history professor) in creating a fake class (that they ALL attend!) to avoid confronting Howard with the reality that his disease has forced the university to fire him from his job. This novel is precious; Alzheimer's is one of the most cruel diagnoses, but it does present moments of comedy that are undeniable. A must-read!

I was honestly surprised by how much I liked GOODBYE, VITAMIN by Rachel Khong. In this debut, Khong shares the story of Ruth, who at 30 years old has just experienced a broken engagement and moves home to help her parents cope with her father's Alzheimer's disease. Instead of being overly sad, this book is sweet and gentle, filled with many poignant moments. Ruth's Dad, a history professor, is no longer employed by the university, but past students arrange for a clandestine class, giving him purpose and focus. There is also quite a bit of humor interspersed and some charming anecdotes from Ruth's childhood, complete with the wonder of a child's questions (What flavor are germs? Have you ever watched a moth eat clothes?), recorded years ago in notebooks by her Dad.

Much like the self-reflections in the recently published Chemistry by Weike Wang, readers are given insight to Ruth's musings about her personal life and about her Dad: "You mentioned that there were some things on your mind, but lately you were having trouble getting to them – accessing them. You had the feeling that all the thoughts were in a box covered in tape, and the trouble was there was too much tape, and the trouble was you didn't have the proper tools to access them – no scissors and no knife – and it was a lot of trouble – everyday it was new trouble – trying to find the end of the tape." To me, the combination of Ruth's life healing and expanding while her father's life shrinks makes dealing with Alzheimer's feel more real, in some ways similar to the family relationships and patient care presented by Eric Rill in An Absent Mind. GOODBYE, VITAMIN is a relatively short read (208 pages) and received a starred review from Booklist. as well as being named an amazon Best Book of July 2017.

Links in live blog post:
An Absent Mind by Eric Rill http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2015/01/an-absent-mind-by-eric-rill.html
Chemistry by Weike Wang http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2017/05/chemistry-by-weike-wang.html
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong https://www.amazon.com/Goodbye-Vitamin-Novel-Rachel-Khong/dp/1250109167/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500578222&sr=1-1&keywords=goodbye+vitamin

4.5 stars

What a sweet, sad, yet funny book. Told in journal entry format, the novel follows one year in the life of Ruth, who, reeling from a break-up, goes home to help her mother take care of her father who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. She has avoided her family for years, as her father was a drinker and cheated on her mom.

Throughout the novel are snippets of journal entries of her father’s from when Ruth was a child. The wonder of the world through a child’s eyes is seen, as many of the entries are the cute, funny, and endearing things children say. The love her father has for her shines through. It helps Ruth, and the reader, see her dad with new eyes. The themes of family, love, forgiveness, friendship, and of course, memory, are explored.

Most of Ruth's journal entries are small snippets of her day, in conversational narrative. A fun aspect of the novel is how Ruth researches AD and attempts to slow down the progression of her father’s Alzheimer’s through vitamins, oddball recipes (jellyfish), and superfoods. Food plays an important role in the novel.

The comic relief is what keeps this novel from being maudlin. Ruth’s wry observations and her imperfect family can be quite funny. The truths the book contains are never heavy-handed or manipulative. I love it when an author trusts the reader to “get it”.

A couple of favorite quotes:

“what imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers.”

“…all of a sudden it didn’t matter what you remembered or didn’t, and the remembering - it occurred to me – was irrelevant. All that mattered was that the day was nice – was what it was.”

I really liked Ruth’s voice and when I turned the last page, I wasn’t ready to say good-bye. A fantastic debut!

A book about family, life and regrets. The main character, Ruth, comes home to take care of her father who has lost his job as a professor due to Alzheimer's. Her mom still has issues from an affair that her husband had years ago. We learn about things the family has dealt with as the book progresses. We also get insight on dealing with Alzheimer's. I enjoyed the journal format. To me, it made things stand out a bit more. At times the book is a bit hard to digest, but keep reading. The book is worth it. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the advanced reading copy of this book in return for my honest review.

A lighthearted story about a woman who returns home to help take care of her father who has Alzheimer's. An entertaining read with quirky characters and creative prose.

<I>Goodbye, Vitamin</I> is a short book and a super quick read. It's written as journal entries for the one year 30 year old Ruth returns to her parents home to help with her dad suffering from Alzheimer's. The book is wonderfully written, in that it feels real. However, some of Ruth's train on though was hard to follow and I got confused. But I wondered how much of that was intentional.

Although the book stems around the topic of Alzheimer's, it is more from the view of a caretaker, or someone close to the sufferer watching them deteriorate. We see the struggles Ruth has with coming back to her family home, living with her parents again, feeling like a little kid lost all while trying to be a grown up and offer assistance. Like I said, it's real.

I did like the book for the perspective it took on the subject. I don't think I fully loved the book for the same reason. This might be an unfair way to assess <I>Goodbye, Vitamin</I> so take my star rating for the actual meaning "I liked it".

Howard Young, a thriving professor, is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease after a series of incidents, from tossing his pants along his street to confusing his class schedule. His wife invokes the help of their daughter, Ruth, to stay for a year. Despite still being upset about her broken engagement, 30-year-old Ruth dutifully quits her job and makes the move to her parents' house. Things aren't as she remembered - her dad has periods of lucidity but can otherwise be erratic, and her mother is so concerned with him that she has nearly given up. The book is a series of Ruth's diary entries over the course of her stay. Teaming up with one of her father's colleagues, they take steps to get him back on his legs.

I expected a book about Alzheimer's disease to be depressing with many somber moments - and sure, there were a few. However, Khong showcases the quirkiness and amusement of the situation with Ruth's sense of humor. I was charmed by the quick blurbs and interactions she and her dad faced on any given day, which gave the book a more realistic feel. The journal entry format was a unique stylistic choice, and it allowed the most memorable moments of Ruth's visit to shine through.

That being said, I still wanted to know more. Many pages were focused on our narrator's life, while I was more curious about her father. I wished the story dug a little deeper, but nonetheless, this was a quick read with a great blend of wit and reality.

An entertaining, poignant, funny debut told from the perspective of Ruth whose father is suffering from Alzheimer's. Ruth's mother has all but given up as she just can't take it anymore and her brother is still away for college, absolutely no help. So, Ruth, who is suffering from an emotional break up with her fiance, is asked to leave San Francisco and come to LA to attend to her father.

The things that Ruth comes up with to help her father are sometimes just laugh out loud hilarious. She is constantly reading about things that cause and can help her father's symptoms. Jellyfish everything for one day was just a little gross, however. Ha!! She even goes so far as to set up "fake" classes to help her father think that he is still teaching at the University!

An enjoyable read from a debut author, Rachel Khong.

Thanks to Henry Holt & Co. and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

I recommend this short but moving book about a woman caring for her father with Alzheimer’s. This is a prospect I find absolutely terrifying, both for my parents and for myself. It seems to me that almost any physical ailment would be less scary than gradually losing one’s mind, knowing that it’s happening but being powerless to stop it. And yet Khong’s first novel isn’t as devastating as you might think; rather, it’s clever, insightful, and quietly emotional.

Thirty-year-old Ruth visits her parents at Christmas-time after learning of her father’s diagnosis – and because her fiancé recently left her. Her relationship with her parents is complicated at best, but when her mother asks her to stay for a year, she feels she can’t say no.

This story is about Alzheimer’s but it’s also about a family coming together, and about a thirty year old being forced to confront her own problems. While I sympathized with Ruth, some of her issues seemed particularly “millennial”. Recovering from a broken engagement with the person you just gave years of your life to? I’ve been there. Thirty and a college drop-out with no career goals and the ability to move home with no planning at all — that was a stretch for me. Still, I didn’t have to be Ruth to feel for her. I particularly shared Ruth’s fear that when I’m needed, I won’t be good enough, or unselfish enough.

It’s all so messed up. I think what it is, is that when I was young, my mother was her best version of herself. And here I am, now, a shitty grown-up, and messing it all up, and a disappointment. What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we can care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person – what we felt about that person.

Despite its serious subject, Khong’s writing brings a lighter side to this story. It’s sort of stream-of-consciousness, and some of it is so random, it’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but it will have you seeing the world in a slightly different light.

Which is not to say that the Alzheimer’s part takes a back seat. It’s ever-present in the way Ruth constantly seeks new ways to prolong her father’s memories and identity, from Ruth’s mother being afraid to cook with aluminum pans to Ruth searching for ways to cook jellyfish. Being forced to watch someone you love change in small ways every day has to be awful. And at the same time, Ruth and her brother have to confront the cracks in their family structure in order to properly care for their father, and Ruth has to confront how memories shape her own reality.

I really appreciated Ruth’s relationship with her brother, and the reality that siblings often have very different experiences (and therefore, different relationships) with their parents. I was also quite moved by Ruth’s reactions to her break-up, having gone through something pretty similar. Ruth finds that the end of her relationship calls into question everything she’d done in the years spent with him, and everything she remembered. This line particularly struck me (as it paralleled my own experience):

I knew it started being over with Joel when I’d open a bottle of wine and he wouldn’t drink it. Sharing things is how things get started, and not sharing things is how they end.

The novel is written in diary form, which is clearly a conscious choice as Khong parallels Ruth’s diary with the diaries her father kept when she was a little girl. His diaries are observations of the silly and endearing things Ruth did as a child, and through them you see not only his love for his daughter, but also the similar quirkiness they both share (especially their attention to words, which I loved). While I often find books written as diaries problematic, it’s workable here as this is Ruth’s story of a year spent at home, both her observations and her personal growth. Although I did have some issues with the diary format, and a jarring use of second person (I see why she does it, but found it disruptive).

There’s a slow beauty to this story that will have you thinking about it much longer than it takes to actually read it. The book is all the more compelling because it’s a situation many of us could very well have to face some day.

Khong is Chinese-American, from Southern California, and she was a writer and editor of food magazine Lucky Peach. This is her first novel. You can find out more about how she wrote this book in this interview.

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Henry Holt & Co. for sharing this novel, which was published July 11, 2017.

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.

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.

This was a simple and easy read, yet it carried so much meaning and sentiment.
The first line of the book caught my attention right away, it also set the mood for the whole book.
This was an easily relatable read. Ruth was so honest and real with how things just were. No pretentious deep moments or over depressing sadness. She was very realistic but also honest with herself.

Rachel Khong's debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin begins with a young woman named Ruth making the trip home for the holidays and her mother asking her if she could stay for a while longer because of her father. Because her father, a well-regarded history professor has begun forgetting things, to the point of being asked to take a leave from his job. And it turns out that by “awhile” her mother means at least a year. On the one hand, it’s not too big a deal as Ruth’s fiancé has just left her and her job is easy enough to put on hold. On the other, she’s not prepared to confront a new version of her father, especially as there are things about the old version, namely his alcoholism and his affair, that she doesn’t want to acknowledge.

But stay she does. She tracks the year as a journal of sorts with the days marking not just time moving forward, but of her reminiscences of her father colored by the man he is now becoming. A man often angry and reclusive who does not want to face either the past or what’s happening in the present. Khong’s usage of the journal format is a poignant mirror to her father's red notebook—the place where he recorded the things she said to him as a child every day. The whimsicality of the notebook with its childish observations

Today you asked me where metal comes from. You asked me what flavor are germs.

Today you bit off the corners of your sandwich and announced you were taking the edge off.

is that much more painful, overlaid as it is by his increasing loss of memory.

With the red notebook and other items and actions less profound and more mundane Khong uses the lightest of touch to create the deepest intimacy. Time and again she lets Ruth drop her careful, acerbic facade and speak directly to the reader, inviting them into her confidence—often about things she doesn’t want to admit out loud. Even as she’s coming to terms with the loss of the father she knew it is her awakening to the woman her mother has always been that pierces.

Here’s the fear: she gave to us, and we took from her, until she disappeared.

Without trivializing what is a devastating illness Khong infuses Goodbye, Vitamin with an aching humor. It is not a novel filled with all the conversations we like to believe we will have with loved ones as time is running out. It is not a novel of escape. Rather, it is even better for its realism. The moments when silence is all that’s left, when acceptance of what is is as good as it’s going to get. Khong embraces these moments, filling them with a quiet beauty that is more impactful than grand gestures or sentimentality. Which is not to say that the last lines of Goodbye, Vitamin won’t leave you in tears. Because they will.

Tonight a man found Dad's pants in a tree lit with Christmas lights. The stranger called and said, "I have some pants? Belonging to a Howard Young?"

"Well, shit," I said. I put the phone down to verify that Dad was home and had pants on. He was, and did.

These opening lines are some of the best I've read in a long time. Moreover, they are highly indicative of what you're getting into with this debut novel. It's funny and it's sad and it reveals all its elements rather languidly. The writing is a complexity of harshness and sweetness, quite compelling.

With paragraphs like this:

There was a man named Joseph, who spent years in prison, and in that time had managed to loosen and ultimately extricate one eye with a coffee stirrer. His left eye, because he'd heard about the heightened sense of the blind and wanted to better hear his heart, in case it ever stopped.

There's a lot of interesting... trivia is the correct word, I suppose, though it seems inadequate to me. Interesting facts (many of which I looked up to unfailingly find true) but apropos of nothing. Similarly, there are a lot of observations like the paragraph above that have no bearing on or relation to the plot. It often seems like these were shining, interesting bits Khong dreamed up and included for the sake of showing off their shininess. This isn't so much a criticism as it is explaining that the reader needs to be in the sort of mood where they can just enjoy the ride, appreciating the writing for what it is, regardless of its impact on the characters or the plot.

I enjoyed this very much. It was a departure from what I most often gravitate towards in novels, but nonetheless the sort of storytelling I appreciate. My favourite element was the memories Ruth's father recorded from their interactions when she was a child. They were sweet and magical (in a good way!), and come full circle in a bittersweet fashion that makes the book even lovelier.

Henry Holt & Co. provided an advanced copy. Goodbye Vitamin comes out this Tuesday, July 11th.

It's really difficult to read a first person narrative when the character is flighty, insecure and unreliable. In this book, written at times like a diary, the main character, Ruth, has just been dumped by her fiancé when she travels to Los Angeles for Christmas with her parents. Her father has begun to suffer from dementia and her mother asks her to spend one year helping at home; oddly enough she agrees. Perhaps Ruth envisioned herself as a rescuing angel in her father's time of need or perhaps she just wanted a break herself. She finds that family issues don't disappear just because one member has dementia and her own problems won't take a break due to her relocation south. The author has some beautiful nuggets hidden within her work. She has insights on love, duty, responsibility and relationships that are impressive. Unfortunately they are lost within random skits of interactions. A year was probably too long a time period for this effort or else the book needed more editing. Rachel Khong is gifted. I look forward to her next work.

3.5stars for me. I enjoyed this book, but I didn't love it. The writing was like journal entries and it was powerful how they changed from what her dad had made notes about her as a child, to her making notes about his actions as an adult with Alzheimers. While I enjoyed the humor, I found a few things too far of a stretch for me to connect to the characters. (financials, mom's quirkiness, etc.). I do recognize the daily struggle for patients and families is unimaginable until in that situation, so its appropriate the author tried to tackle that with this book. Thanks for the opportunity to read this book!

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27746288-goodbye-vitamin" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Goodbye, Vitamin" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487633503m/27746288.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27746288-goodbye-vitamin">Goodbye, Vitamin</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14650756.Rachel_Khong">Rachel Khong</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1894184858">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
After a breakup with her fiancé, whom she quit college, to follow him to California, Ruth returns to her hometown to help her mom care for her dad who has Alzheimer's. <br />This is an introspective time for her, and also a humorous yet heartbreaking time as she cares for him and deals with her own issues. I really liked the journal entries that her father kept about her through her growing up years which he shares with her throughout the book.<br /><br />Thank you to Henry Holt and Company Publishing and Netgalley for the opportunity to read the ARC!
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/12851291-karen">View all my reviews</a>

I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it just didn't grab me at all. It just wanted interesting enough

You might see the subject of Alzheimer's and think this is a sad book and perhaps pass it by. Of course, that is absolutely a devastating disease and there were times I felt so bad for the entire family, especially Ruth's dad. In my opinion, however, to pass on this book would mean you'd be missing out on some of the most engaging, often laugh out loud funny writing and characters I've come across this year. Rachel Khong's writing style literally grabbed me on the first page and I knew I was going to love this book. Yes, that quickly I knew!

"Tonight a man found Dad's pants in a tree that was lit with still-hanging Christmas lights. The Stranger called and said, 'I have some pants? Belonging to a Howard Young?'   'Well, shit,' I said. I put the phone down to verify that Dad was home and had pants on. He was, and did.  Yesterday, on Mom's orders, I'd written his name and our number in permanent marker onto the tags of all his clothes. Apparently what he's done, in protest, is pitched the numbered clothing into trees. Up and down Euclid, his slacks and shirts hang from the branches..."

That's a condensed version of the first page but that's all it took for me to decide I liked Ruth and I really liked her dad. The story is narrated by Ruth who I found to be a down to earth, witty and just plain likable character. She's returned home after her fiancé has left her and her mom has requested her help with her dad, whose dementia symptoms are increasing, yet most of the time he's pretty lucid and together. We also meet Rachel's brother as well as her best friends and somehow the author made every character feel multidimensional. I have a feeling it was the spot on, often snappy, dialogue that made the characters leap off the page. It's just that good. I also really enjoyed the past journal entries of Ruth's dad as he has decided it's time to share those with her. They were really creative and I loved how the author ended up bringing that journal concept back in the end.

This ended up being a perfect afternoon on the patio one-sit read for me which at just 208 pages was a just right length for this story. I really hope I've enticed you to give this fantastic debut a try. I can't wait to see what Rachel Khong has in store for us in the future.

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.