Goodbye, Vitamin

Goodbye, Vitamin is Asian American author Rachel Khong’s debut novel. Khong, whose grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease, explores how Alzheimer’s disease affects a family in this work of literary fiction. Written as a series of diary entries, Khong’s protagonist, Ruth Young, meditates on memory, forgiveness, and the challenges inherent in familial relationships as she navigates an adulthood that is not turning out as planned.

Published in 2017, Goodbye, Vitamin received positive reviews and was named one of the year’s best books by outlets like NPR, Vogue, and O, The Oprah Magazine. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the California Book Award for First Fiction.

This study guide refers to the 2017 Picador paperback edition.

Plot Summary

Goodbye, Vitamin is written as a series of diary entries over the course of a year, beginning at Christmastime. Ruth Young, 30, is home for the holidays for the first time in a few years. Normally, she spends the Christmas season with her fiancé, Joel, and his family, but Joel recently ended their engagement after he revealed that he was cheating on her. Feeling lost, Ruth returns home and finds that her father, Howard, has discovered he has Alzheimer’s disease after a series of escalating memory-lapse incidents. At her mother Annie’s urging, Ruth decides to live at home for the next year to support her father and alleviate some of her mother’s responsibility for his care.

Ruth’s diary entries are interspersed with entries from her father’s diary, which he kept when Ruth was a child and includes letters to her. Ruth tries to convince her younger brother, Linus, to come home as well, but he refuses. Ruth and Linus had quite different experiences growing up: When Ruth went to college, their father began drinking heavily and had an affair with a colleague at the college where he taught. Linus, who lived at home at the time, had to deal with the fallout and still harbors resentment toward their father.

As January progresses, Ruth notices her father’s tendency to hide in his office. She learns that the dean at his university suspended his teaching contract due to his illness and worsening symptoms. Ruth receives a call from Howard’s teaching assistant, Theo, and together they plan to create a fake class for Howard to teach without him knowing the class is not real. Annie encourages Howard to take Ruth along to these classes as an assistant, and for a time, Howard’s mood and disposition improve as he teaches his class, which is populated with his former students.

Ruth begins acclimating to life at home and develops a passion for cooking meals with ingredients she believes will help to slow or stall the progression of her father’s illness. She reconnects with her childhood best friend, Bonnie, and begins to see a path forward for her life that does not include Joel. She thinks about the choices she made in her life, such as quitting school to follow Joel across the country during his time in medical school, and how these choices kept her away from her family for so long when they needed her.

The longer Ruth is at home, the more she learns about her family’s dynamic during the years she was away. She finds divorce papers, signed by her parents, in a desk drawer. She confronts her mother about it, but Annie refuses to discuss the matter. Ruth suspects that her father had an affair with one of the students currently enrolled in his class, Joan. Ruth asks her father to tell her how he and her mother met, and Howard instead tells her the story of how he met Joan, mistakenly thinking that he is talking about his wife and confirming Ruth's suspicions.

Ruth and Theo organize a horseback riding excursion as part of the class but realize too late that the dean who fired Howard is also on the path. When he hears Howard discussing the history of the Pony Express, he interrogates Howard about what he is doing, and Howard realizes what Theo and Ruth have done. He locks himself in his home office and refuses to speak to anyone. As if sensing something is wrong, Linus calls Ruth and tells her he is coming home.

The family struggles to figure out how to occupy the same house again after so many years apart, complicated by Howard’s worsening symptoms. Ruth receives a call at home from Joan, who is concerned that Howard no longer remembers her. This infuriates Ruth and the situation comes to a head when Theo and Joan arrive at the house to try to cheer up Howard. During dinner, Annie realizes that Howard was unfaithful to her with Joan, and she locks herself in their room, forcing Howard, confused, to sleep on the couch. Howard then goes missing, and the police return him home after a neighbor finds him sitting on their porch. Howard sits on the couch and begins to cry, and Ruth realizes her mother will not leave her father despite his faults when she goes to him and comforts him.

Realizing that Howard’s condition will continue to worsen, the family makes safety preparations for Howard such as getting rid of poisonous plants and installing a lock at the bottom of the door to prevent him from leaving again. As the family makes these adjustments, their relationship begins to improve. Ruth also acknowledges her romantic feelings for Theo, which are complicated when she receives an unexpected phone call from Joel. He tells her that he and the woman he had an affair with, Kristen, have moved to Charleston to be closer to his family. They are engaged and expecting a baby.

Although Ruth takes the news hard, Theo takes her out drinking and the two stay up until dawn playing basketball. They begin dating, and Ruth thinks about her looming first anniversary of living at home. Instead of making plans to return to her earlier job and life, Ruth applies to a sonography certification program. Her father tells her that her time is almost up and that he wants her to feel free to leave, but Ruth tells him that she is an adult and can decide for herself.

In December, the family gathers to celebrate Christmas. Linus gets them all walkie-talkies that they can use to communicate with one another. On Christmas night, after the guests have gone home, the four family members walk into the yard to test the devices, and each follows Howard’s lead as he walks into the dark.