Review
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Named a PopSugar summer read
BuzzFeed, "22 Exciting New Books You Need To Read This Summer"
Named one of Coastal Living's “50 Books of Summer”
Elle, "The 24 Best Books to Read This Summer"
Named a Goop summer read
Bustle, "29 New Fiction Books To Read This Summer"
Vanity Fair, "What to Read Right Now"
"Told in a diary format over the year that Ruth spends at home,
Goodbye, is a quietly brilliant disquisition on family
relationships and adulthood, told in prose that is so startling
in its spare beauty that I found myself thinking about Khong's
turns of phrase for days after I finished reading." -The New York
Times Book Review
"[Rachel Khong] is very funny talking about her parents, who are
aging. And I can relate (laughs). It's a unique moment in your
life when you realize, "OK, I think I'm in charge now!" -Reese
Witherspoon, in an interview with USA Today
"A heartwarming book. . .Khong's endearingly quirky novel. . .is
filled with whimsical observations, oddball facts. . . [and] some
passages evoke the wonderful offbeat sensibility of Ali Smith. .
. .Sweet? Yes. Sugarcoated? Perhaps. Saccharine or cloying? Not
to me. Hello, Rachel Khong. Kudos for this delectable take on
familial devotion and dementia." -NPR
"Heartbreaking but also funny. . . .sparkling. . . .illuminating.
. . .[Goodbye, is] a novel modeled on real life, where
humor often rubs shoulders with pathos, and Ruth’s gift as a
narrator is her ability to observe and record it all." -San
Francisco Chronicle
"[Goodbye is] material for another grueling exploration
of loss, and yet, against all odds, Ms. Khong has produced a book
that’s whimsical and funny. This is because the author, like her
guiding spirit, Lorrie Moore, has a love for the ridiculous in
the mundane. . .This sweet-natured novel is about Ruth’s attempts
to come to terms with a past her her can no longer remember
while still attending to the quirky, fleeting joys of the
present. -The Wall Street Journal
"Reading Goodbye, . . . .is like tasting an entirely new
flavor. At once gut-wrenching and deeply soothing." -Oprah.com,
"2 Compulsively Readable Novels"
"Engaging and humorous and deeply touching. . . Khong has created
something special." -The Charlotte Observer
"In her tender, well-paced debut novel. . . .Khong writes
heartbreaking family drama with charm, perfect prose, and deadpan
humor."―Booklist, starred review
"Goodbye, is one of those rare books that is both
devastating and light-hearted, heartfelt and joyful, making it a
perfect and unique summer read. Don't miss it."―Isaac Fitzgerald,
BuzzFeed
"Tender yet funny in turns, Goodbye, offers poignant
in into family, memory, marriage, parenthood, love, and
loss."―Jarry Lee, BuzzFeed
"A darkly funny debut novel about love, loss, and
heartbreak."―PopSugar
"A good mix of humor and love." ―Elle
"Tragic and funny." ―Entertainment Weekly, "23 Most Anticipated
Books of 2017"
“Incredibly poignant . . . Rachel Khong’s first novel sneaks up
on you ― just like life . . . and heartbreak. And love.”―Miranda
July
"The novel Goodbye, builds with humor, with gusto and with
such deceptive lightness that the reader wonders, at its
devastating end, how in the world the debut author Rachel Khong
managed to pull it off so beautifully. The only possible answer
is this, that Khong is a magician, and that we are lucky to fall
under her spell at the beginning of her brilliant writing life."
―Lauren Groff, author of es and Furies
“Half stand-up comic, half a seismographer of the human heart,
Khong writes with vulnerability and penetrating in, and with
a gentle humor that moves you not only to care for her
characters, but also to care more fervently for the people in
your life.”―Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have A Body
Like Mine
"Rachel Khong's Goodbye, is one of the funniest elegiac
novels I have ever read, and also one of the gutsiest. It is
about so many things―Alzheimer’s, fast food, turning thirty,
marriage, Southern California, the digestive habits of jelly
fish, the invention of the intermittent windshield wiper―and at
the same time it is about only one thing, the really important
thing, the imperative, as E. M. Forster long ago urged, to
connect. Rarely has gravitas been handled with such lightness of
touch, or a sad story told so happily." ―David Leavitt, author of
The Indian Clerk and The Lost Language of Cranes
"Hard-ball, laconic, severely, even frighteningly, . To
boot, a current of food runs through it, a sophisticated but not
snobbish celebration of the empiric integrity of all food. The
color of Fanta! You will emerge wanting to take a good snifferoo
of a fresh hot cut radish, to study the underside of a saltine,
and in the face of depression to be a better and perkier person
than you are. This book does it all." ―Padgett Powell, author of
Cries for Help, Various and Edisto
“Equal parts clever and tender, Khong's [Goodbye,] is a
moving meditation on what it means to patient, forgiving, and
human.” ―Karolina Waclawiak, author of The Invaders and How to
Get into the Twin Palms
“I don’t know how she did it, but Rachel Khong has breathed fresh
life into the slacker comedy, the family drama, and the campus
novel―in wry, swift, spiky, heartfelt prose that is a joy to
read. I have enormous admiration for Goodbye, , but more
than that, I enjoyed the hell out of reading it.”―Justin Taylor,
author of Flings
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About the Author
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Rachel Khong grew up in Southern California and holds
degrees from Yale University and the University of Florida. From
2011 to 2016, she was the managing editor then executive editor
of Lucky Peach magazine. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared
in Tin House, Buzzfeed, Joyland, American Short Fiction, The San
Francisco Chronicle, The Believer, and California Sunday.
Goodbye, is her debut novel. She lives in San Francisco.
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