Hello, ageing parents. Hello, dementia. Goodbye, vitamin. '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 fianc 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, sweet old man her father has become. ' Half stand-up comic, half seismographer of the human heart . Khong writes with a gentle humour that moves you not only to care for her characters, but also to care more fervently for the people in your life' Alexandra Kleeman , author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine 'One of the funniest elegiac novels I have ever read'David Leavitt , author of The Lost Language of Cranes.