Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong, $15, Amazon

Rachel reluctantly agrees to stay the year, to help her mother get a handle on her father's illness. Her father is displaying signs of dementia, and after years of drinking, cheating on his wife, and neglecting Rachel's younger brother, Linus, who is now off at college, the family dynamics are not what they once were. It's that combination of hilarity and heartbreak that follow the reader throughout the novel, as Rachel returns to Los Angeles for Christmas with her parents, whom she hasn't visited in a while. Rachel had wondered why he had so fastidiously packed all of his belongings separately from hers. She thinks they are packing up to move to a new place instead Joel informs Rachel she is the only one leaving. She has just broken up with her fiancé, Joel, in a way that is only comical because it didn't happen to you. Goodbye, Vitamin follows 30-year-old sonographer Ruth Young, who is living in San Francisco.

It's about love - losing it, holding on to it, the different manifestations of it. It's about growing up - finding your place in a world so changeable, sometimes cruel. It's about memories the way they can get muddled and twisted in our minds, what it means when we lose them. It's about families fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, wives and husbands. He was, and did.'īut this is not a book about Alzheimer's, or at least, it's not only about Alzheimer's. I put the phone down to verify that Dad was home and had pants on. The stranger called and said, 'I have some pants? Belonging to Howard Young?' 'Well, shit', I said. Rachel Khong's Goodbye, Vitaminbegins perhaps exactly the way you might expect a novel about Alzheimer's disease to begin: 'Tonight a man found Dad's pants in a tree lit with Christmas lights.

Goodbye vitamin novel