Goodbye, Vitamin: A Novel

· Sold by Henry Holt and Company
3.7
14 reviews
Ebook
208
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

Winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for First Fiction

"A quietly brilliant disquisition . . . told in prose that is so startling in its spare beauty that I found myself thinking about Khong's turns of phrase for days after I finished reading."—Doree Shafrir, The New York Times Book Review

Her life at a crossroads, a young woman goes home again in this funny and inescapably moving debut from a wonderfully original new literary voice.

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. But as Ruth's father’s condition intensifies, the comedy in her situation takes hold, gently transforming her all her grief.

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.

Ratings and reviews

3.7
14 reviews
Roylee Bonner
May 14, 2022
PO 6r8 LLP 0 do me I'm 05b so m890s5 è5r yh it's 30 let..o off 2 Mil zzz00 M8msie
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Nicole Gunn
January 20, 2018
I liked it. I thought the format of the diary helped with getting inside the mind of a caregiver. Funny in places, heartbreaking in other. A well rounded book.
28 people found this review helpful
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Karen Newsome
December 17, 2017
Pretty boring and hard to finish.
35 people found this review helpful
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About the author

Rachel Khong grew up in Southern California and holds degrees from Yale University and the University of Florida. From 2011 to 2016, she was the managing editor then executive editor of Lucky Peach magazine. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Tin House, The Cut, BuzzFeed, American Short Fiction, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Believer. She lives in San Francisco.

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