Goodbye, Vitamin
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 fiancé 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 'This small miracle of a novel about family, friendship and memory is equal parts laugh-out-loud hilarious and acutely moving... a tender, brilliantly original storytelling style that's completely her own...has reinvented the slacker comedy to produce a wry, witty and heartfelt family drama - a complete joy to read' - Stella Charls, Readings "A quietly brilliant disquisition . . . As her father deteriorates, Ruth discovers the diary he kept as she was growing up; together, the two stories make for a wry and often poignant meditation on memory.' "One of those rare books that is both devastating and light-hearted, heartful and joyful. . . . Don't miss it."-- Buzzfeed