Rejuvenating ‘Booktail’ for ‘Goodbye, Vitamin’

In Rachel Khong’s novel Goodbye, Vitamin, Ruth, a recently dumped young woman, heads home for Christmas and finds her parents adrift. Her father, Howard, a professor, is grappling with dementia, and her mother, Annie, struggles to keep up, filled with anger over betrayals that her husband no longer recalls. She’s banished all aluminum from the house, as well as all the snacks, but plies Ruth’s dad with fast-food dinners. There’s nothing left in the refrigerator for Ruth to eat but a jar of guava jelly and a piece of old ginger. “I type into the search engine How long to starve to death?” quips Ruth, “and am somewhat heartened by the answer, which is anywhere from three weeks to seventy days.” After Christmas, Ruth quits her job in San Francisco to move in with her parents for a year, even though her dad keeps telling her to “go home.” Soon, she and her father’s teaching assistant rig up a plan to get Howard back to the university to teach one last class before he loses everything. “It doesn’t matter who remembers what, I guess, so long as somebody remembers something,” Ruth thinks.

This at once hilarious and heart-wrenching novel juxtaposes a father’s loving memories of his daughter growing up, as the world opens up to her, against his losses, as his world closes to him. 

The Goodbye, Vitamin “booktail” is a low-sugar riff off the classic vodka tonic, only with more fruit and flavor. The vodka is infused with refreshing cucumber and cantaloupe, for the melon that bookends the novel: At the start, Ruth finds her parents imbibing cantaloupe juice while watching the Rose Parade. At the end of the novel, Annie brings home a super-sweet cantaloupe to share. Ruth recalls how much she enjoys this forbidden fruit, a pleasure she gave up for her ex-fiancé. Sweet cantaloupe and crisp cucumber are balanced by bitter grapefruit, which evokes the aroma of Annie and Howard’s citrus tree–lined street. Agave or another sweetener, like simple syrup (if desired), adds a touch of sugar to amplify the primary flavors. The drink is topped with tonic water, which contains quinine, an ancient antimalarial derived from cinchona bark. The drink’s garnish is attractive and, dare I say, invigorating.•