Goodbye, Vitamin

This is a new favorite because it does a really hard thing and makes it look easy. It's not easy to tell the story of a dying parent without being melodramatic or making him out to be some kind of perfect saint, but not some supervillain, either. It's not easy to show the affection and distance and resentment you can see in your own parents' marriage as a grown-up yourself, to show that you both love and have outgrown the place you grew up, with its Southern California citrus trees and strip malls. It's not easy to tell tell the whole story of a family in such a small space, with all their strangeness and love for each other, and all the ways they hurt each other and care for each other, without making it an epic 700 page book. The way Rachel Khong tells this story in its fragmented, vignette-style chunks, is the exact right way to tell this kind of story. It's how your brain works when you lose someone this way, a little at a time, looking them in the eye and knowing they're not them anymore one day at a time. I'd follow this narrator, who is so funny and smart, so weird and clumsy and heartbroken, through anything, and especially the year she spends making sense of her own heartbreak and figuring out how to navigate the suddenly unfamiliar version of who her dad is now and who she will be after this year is done with her.

This month, Amazon has chosen Goodbye Vitamin as the debut of the month and given that I have committed to purchasing all of the DOTHM by Amazon, I had to get this one. I will say that it took a bit of time for me to get into this one, but as the story progressed, I really enjoyed the story that was unfolding. Rachel Khong does an excellent job of leading the reader into the sad world of Alzheimer's and the effects it has on the family. Ruth is a professional in California who comes home to help take care of her father who is suffering from the disease. We find that Ruth's father, Howard used to be a professor and has recently lost his job due to the disease. Meanwhile Howard's wife and Ruth's mother, Mary is in the background dealing with an illicit affair Howard had years ago. We are taken for a poignant ride as readers turn the pages. At first I did have an issue with the journal style of this novel, it can be a bit off-putting, but in the end it is worth the time and patience you put into this novel.

This book told the story of one family's experience as Howard, the head of the family, descended into Alzheimer's disease. It was almost as if Alzheimer's disease helped to heal this fractured family. What was meant for bad was claimed for good. Ruth, Howard's adult daughter, packed up her life and moved back home to help care for her father and to help him live his life to the fullest.

The opening paragraph made me laugh out loud, causing me to instantly like this book. The humor infused throughout the book helped to lighten the subject matter. I enjoyed getting to know the quirky and unique characters. I felt their sadness, smiled during their sweet and tender moments and I so enjoyed their funny interactions and recollections.

Even though Howard's short-term memory was failing, there was still living to be done, joy to be had and he still had wisdom and knowledge to share with those around him. As Howard's circle of family and friends continued to show respect and genuine fondness, the quality of all of their lives greatly increased.

I loved how Howard had kept a journal filled with everyday memories from when Ruth was growing up. It was filled with interactions between a dad and his daughter, observations of so many precious, but easy to miss memories. This journal was a labor of love, a gift of memories and moments of being fully present.

This book was sad, funny, heartwarming and keenly observant. It was filled with many tender moments and many intentional acts of kindness. A joy to read!

I purchased this book based on very encouraging reviews and also the subject matter. For personal and professional reasons, I have an interest in dementia. I have read non-fictional accounts, fiction, and research. Goodbye, Vitamin is a nice addition to the literary work on an illness that will touch most of us in some way. Ms. Khong manages to write with both humor and love about watching a parent lose their memory.

Ruth is 30 years old and reluctantly returns home to help her mother care for her father who has Alzheimer’s disease. Ruth quit college to follow her former fiancé out east for medical school. She is working in a hospital as a radiology technician when her fiancé dumps her. Once home, she finds that her mother is trying various pseudoscience practices to stave off the advancement of dementia. She has also emotionally checked out of the family. Her father, fired from his job as a history professor due to erratic behavior, has shut himself in his study. Though he has some major character flaws, especially as a husband, Ruth loves her dad and tries to help him. For example, she and his former students trick him into thinking that he is still employed, which ultimately backfires. Her father begins to share with her the notes that he kept while she was growing up. The notes are full of her observations and precocious questions about life. He asks her to start keeping a record of his days so that they can both remember. Ruth’s younger brother Linus also comes home and together the family learns how to cope with a terminal illness.

The novel is told over the course of 13 months, from December to December. It initially starts as a diary, but around July the entries are no longer dated. This book is a very fast read as it is told in snippets of observation and events. However, the writing is sharp, lovely, and humorous. It is best to read slowly and savor the words, puns, and emotions. It takes a skilled writer to respectfully use humor when writing about a serious subject. This book will give you hope as it breaks your heart.

I’m dealing with two aging parents, one of whom has some memory issues. So, this book interested me. Ruth is much younger than me, just 30. Her father is young enough to still be working when Alzheimer’s rears its ugly head. Her fiancé has just left her and she’s feeling rudderless, so she quits her job and moves home to help her mother take care of him. Her younger brother offers no help.

This is billed as a comedy. But at the beginning, it seemed more hopeless than comedic. It made me feel sad and depressed. There are touches of sweetness, and as the book went on, I found flashes of humor.

It’s a weird writing style. Little scenes make up a chapter. It’s more a journal or a love letter to her father. Little bits of insight scattered throughout the pages. There are things Khong gets exactly right. The anger of a spouse about her husband’s past affair, an affair he’s long ago forgotten. Or this quote “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 with tape, and the trouble was there was too much tape and you didn’t have the proper tools to access them - no scissors and no knife - and it was a lot of trouble- every day it was new trouble- trying to find the end of the tape.”

I will admit to liking the book more once I got into it and stopped expecting humor. It’s a bittersweet book, poignant really.

Goodbye Vitamin is set in California in the Young family’s home. The narrator, Ruth Young, is at her parent’s place for the holidays. Her mother, Annie, a retired teacher, has virtually stopped cooking in order to feed on vitamins. Her father, Howard, also a former teacher, over the past year, has become a grumpy old man with dementia. With her brother Linus, and good friend, Bonnie, Ruth begins a crusade to learn as much as possible about Alzheimer’s and memory loss, in order to find anything that can benefit her father’s deteriorating mind and health.

From one day to the next, her father’s ‘condition’ goes from being managable to being ‘scary.’ She starts to remember the past; the days of her childhood, long before her brilliant father had dementia. This is an interesting, well-written novel, partly in the form of a diary, and partly in the form of an observational checklist, as well as the narrative of a family’s way of coping with change, tolerance, wellness, memories, and memory loss.