It’s much too early in the year to declare best book of 2017 but I think this is a real contender for the title. Goodbye Vitamin really surprised me. It had a lovely almost feel good style that was a bit unusual. And it managed to take a very difficult subject (a parent with Alzheimer’s) the focus of a lovely enjoyable book with humour and good times. It felt very real and I am keen to read more by Rachel Khong.

Shows how people get on with things and find humour in bad situations, in this case a daughter returns home to look after her father as he has Alzheimer’s.
It was‘t a bad book, it was an easy read, some of it in sentences like a list. It just felt a little flat the whole way through and I never engaged in any character.

Reeling from a broken engagement, Ruth Young returns to her childhood home in California for a year to help look after her father, who has Alzheimer’s. She tries feeding Howard every half-cracked dementia health cure (cruciferous vegetables are a biggie) and, with his teaching assistant, Theo, maintains the illusion that her father is still fit to teach by gathering graduate students for a non-credit History of California class that meets in empty classrooms and occasionally off-campus – wherever they can be away from the watchful eye of Dean Levin. As these strategies fail and Howard’s behavior becomes ever more erratic, Ruth realizes the best thing she can do is be a recorder of daily memories, just as Howard was for her when she was a little girl: “Here I am, in lieu of you, collecting the moments” – “Today you…”

This is a delightfully quirky little book, in the same vein as Lisa Owens’ Not Working and Elizabeth McKenzie’s The Portable Veblen. I marked a bunch of funny metaphors:

This morning’s [hangover] is a rodent: pesky but manageable.

It was grotesque, the way I kept trying to save that relationship. Like trying to tuck an elephant into pants.

The moon, tonight, looks like a cut zucchini coin.

But you may well read this with a lump in your throat, too. From one Christmas to the next, we see how much changes for this one family; it’s a reminder that even though the good times are still worth celebrating, they’re gone before you know it.

No review forthcoming / did not finish. I hope it finds an appreciatively audience.

What a beautiful book, a brilliant blend of touching and witty.
Khong writes with humour and approaches Alzheimer's in a careful and clever way.
The characters were fleshed out and a pleasure to read.
It can be very difficult to write about the devastating condition but Khong did it with style and created a wonderful world for the reader to be in.