Goodbye, Vitamin - Tapa dura

`A deft, funny and very moving account of all kinds of loss' * The Big Issue * `Nuanced exploration of family love and remembrance...A contemporary take on the coming-of-age tale...It's sweet without being saccharine, and moving without feeling depressed.' * Refinery29 * `A tragi-comic story about holding a family together when life wants to break them apart and finding yourself when you thought you were completely lost. I absolutely loved this book' * RED * `Funny and tragic, heart-breaking and life-affirming, it reminds you that in the end, that's all there is - countless passing moments' * Grazia * `There's beauty, humour and absurdity in even the most tragic situation as Rachel Khong demonstrates in Goodbye, Vitamin' * Good Housekeeping * `Rachel Khong's Goodbye, Vitamin is the best of these debuts, conversational and light in tone, but heartbreakingly clear-eyed as well ... Khong manages to imbue seemingly mundane topics with charm and pathos through her attentive, humorous and personable writing' * Spectator * 'A beautifully written coming-of-age debut, dreamy and funny . . . flawless' * Independent * 'Mostly this sweet-natured novel is about Ruth's attempts to come to terms with a past her father can no longer remember while still attending to the quirky, fleeting joys of the present. "Here I am, in lieu of you," she writes, "collecting the moments"' -- Sam Sacks, 'Best New Fiction' * Wall Street Journal * `A deceptively complex tale of dementia and its impact on a family... Like a chain of fairy lights in the darkness, with Khong displaying a deep understanding of the way in which memory humanises and connects us individually communally - and without which all becomes chaos' -- Catherine Taylor, Financial Times 'Brilliant disquisition on family, relationships and adulthood, told in prose that is so startling in its spare beauty that I found myself thinking about Khong's turns of phrase for days after I finished reading' -- Doree Shafrir, New York Review of Books

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.