goodbye, vitamin by rachel khong

Sometimes we read books because we see them everywhere; they’re the talk of the town and we want in on the secret. It may take us years to open it up, but we do eventually because it’s always there. Then, there are books we happen across as if by magic. We don’t even know what made us slide over closer to get a better look. No one seems to be talking about these books, at least not in our circles, and we can’t figure out why. They’re just delicious, little morsels of something good, and we’re lucky that we found them.

I discovered Goodbye, Vitamin during one of my favorite pastimes: endlessly scrolling the library e-book app to see what’s available. (I’m a sucker for a good cover, too!) I don’t remember even reading a synopsis; I just cracked it open and the second I got a taste, I knew it was a goner. Like a song, I couldn’t get this book out of my head. I read it again a few months later and forced it into the hands of my mother. We found ourselves excitedly dissecting it, like a two-woman book club. Everything I loved about it, she did too. I’ve recommended it so many times, and even gifted it to someone when our office did a secret book exchange. Recently, on a quarantine walk through my neighborhood, I stopped at one of the free little libraries in someone’s front yard, as I often do; and there, where it hadn’t been any of the times I’d stopped before — a bright, hard copy. I gasped. Was word finally getting around? It’s only natural that I try to convince you, too.

—————————-

After her serious relationship ends, Ruth is beckoned home by her desperate mother hoping for some help in caring for her father whose dementia has caused a series of comical and concerning events. Her father has been a history teacher at the local college for some time, but was let go from his position due to his condition, and Ruth and his favored students pull together to give him a sense of normalcy.

This isn’t an easy book to just give a plot summary for, because the reading experience is about so much more than that. The story is told through bite-sized scenes and tidbits of memory, and the sparse language makes every moment intentional and wrought with meaning. Woven through it all is an adult daughter’s relationship with her father as his mind fails him and he becomes more childlike, and the poetry of that inevitable role reversal. These scenes bowled me over, as I am very fond of my own father and saw so many similarities in the ways that we bond and care for each other. There is a sweet structure throughout the book, in which it is revealed to Ruth that her father has saved many memories of the darndest things she would say as a very young child, and these tidbits have stayed with me even still.

Ultimately, I loved that Khong made a novel out of the simplicities — and by default, the complexities — of everyday life; the thoughts that run through our head as we make meaning of the things that happen to us. Her writing felt like reading my own journal. And her sensitivity toward her characters gave them a delicate quality; you just wanted to hold them and keep them safe.

“It’s about remembering, forgetting, and trying to be okay.” — Rachel Khong, on her novel

——————————-

Rachel Khong was formerly an executive editor for Lucky Peach magazine and founded a workspace for writers and artists in San Francisco for women and nonbinary creatives. Her debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin won the 2017 California Book Award for First Fiction.