Goodbye, Vitamin: A Novel by Rachel Khong

"I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more candid portrait of love between family members. . . .or of the redemptive quality that love can have during illness and heartbreak. Goodbye, Vitamin is a catalogue of days, a love song to their ephemera, a collection of snapshots of quotidian celebrations and failures. The sum of these beats is a book that unexpectedly strips you down, and leaves you feeling more forgiving—and forgiven." —Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter

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.