Written in journal form, the novel begins: “Tonight a man found Dad’s pants in a tree that was lit with still-hanging Christmas lights.” This is the first entry by 29-year-old Ruth Young, home for the holidays in Southern California, after having been dumped by her boyfriend. And yet in her first novel, “Goodbye, Vitamin,” San Francisco author Rachel Khong has managed to create an Alzheimer’s novel that is heartbreaking but also funny, offering a fresh take on the disease and possible outcomes both for the people suffering from it and their caretakers. In any good story, a character must change, and this disease often appears to bring about a total overhaul of the person suffering from it, as they lose their memories, which add up to create a sense of self, as well as their knowledge of the people surrounding them, even people they once loved. Alzheimer’s is a big thing these days - not only the disease, which appears to be on the rise, but also as a trope in fiction.
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