An O: the Oprah Magazine Best Book of 2017
‘Khong is a magician … Brilliant’ Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
‘Khong’s first novel sneaks up on you – just like life, illness and heartbreak. And love. A million small, human and often deeply funny details gather force to tell a tale that is ultimately, incredibly poignant’ Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man
Ruth is thirty and her life is falling apart: she and her fiance are moving house, but he’s moving out to live with another woman; her career is going nowhere; and then she learns that her father, a history professor beloved by his students, has Alzheimer’s. At Christmas, her mother begs her to stay on and help. For a year.
Goodbye, Vitamin is the wry, beautifully observed story of a woman at a crossroads, as Ruth and her friends attempt to shore up her father’s career; she and her mother obsess over the ambiguous health benefits – in the absence of a cure – of dried jellyfish supplements and vitamin pills; and they all try to forge a new relationship with the brilliant, childlike, irascible man her father has become.
‘A beautifully written debut, dreamy and funny … flawless’ Independent
‘Biting, funny and poignant and makes you wish you’d thought of writing it first’ Stylist, ’50 Unmissable Books’
‘Like a chain of fairy lights in the darkness’ Financial Times
‘One of the funniest elegiac novels I have ever read’ David Leavitt, author of The Lost Language of Cranes
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