A 30-year-old woman, Ruth, returns home to Los Angeles, having been dumped by her fiancé, in Rachel Khong’s luminous, moving debut. Ruth’s mother asks her to stay and help with the care of her father, a beloved history professor who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. After Ruth left for college, her father embarked on an affair. Memory, forgiveness, and what we do for family, then, are at the forefront of the narrative. In caregiving, Ruth recalls memories of the reverse, being cared for by him, and gradually, they trade places in gathering the moments of each other’s lives—told in Ruth’s first person, the narration becomes a direct address. Khong’s novel shines with insights about confronting the universal and devastating movement toward decline. But it’s far from the heavy novel about Alzheimer’s that it might have been—grace notes of whimsy and humor pass through its pages, shooting stars.
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