Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - Vitaminas Para No Olvidar

This was a sweet and sad read. I appreciated how the story was told and the change in perspective towards the very end, as Ruth started telling the story to her father as vignettes, like he told her childhood stories. It was short, but I think if it had been any longer, it really would have been too long, as there wasn't a great deal of plot besides Harold's Alzheimer's. I hope Khong continues to write in this style, as it felt very human.

Content Warnings

tenderbench's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

mollybryann's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional funny reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

So beautiful. So weird. Like Miranda July writing Tangled. Thought about how after we leave our childhood homes, there are just a handful of hours where everyone is together in the same dynamics, all of us, afterwards, and rarely in good cheer.
Also someone who had my library copy before me was underlining names of characters, and then slowly names of anyone, and then a single paragraph on plaques and tangles, and then nothing at all, and that’s baffling. With a ruler.

“Today you asked me where metal comes from.

You asked me what flavor are germs. You were distressed because your pair of gloves had gone missing. When I asked you for a description, you said: they are sort of shaped like my hands.

Then he closed the notebook, very suddenly, and said, as though angry, "That's enough."”

“Tonight a man found Dad's pants in a tree lit with Christmas lights. The stranger called and said, "I have some pants? Belonging to a Howard Young?"

"Well, shit," I said. I put the phone down to verify that Dad was home and had pants on. He was, and did.

Yesterday, on Mom's orders, I'd written his name and our number in permanent marker onto the tags of all his clothes.

Apparently what he's done, in protest, is pitched the numbered clothing into trees. Up and down Euclid, his slacks and shirts hang from the branches. The downtown trees have their holiday lights in them, and this man who called had, while driv-ing, noticed the clothes, illuminated.”

“There were signs, I guess, I'd chosen to ignore. At parties, talking to another woman, Joel used to reach out to touch me lightly when I walked by, as if to say, Don't worry, I still like you the best. I noticed when it stopped happening. I told myself that it wasn't anything.”

“"Someone told me it's a tradition they have in Thailand, he says. "Over there the thing to do before you die is compose a cookbook. That way, all the guests at your funeral get to depart with a party favor. Somewhere along the line you can crack this open, see" _he opens the book, at random.

"Say you want to cook trout en papillote for dinner. Well, you're in luck, because there's a recipe right here. So you get your trout en papillote and as a bonus you remember your old friend Carl, too.”

“You know what else is unfair, about Joel? That I loosened the jar lid, so somebody else could open him.”

“Is this a thing? Lately I'm more forgiving. I used to be very quick to judge the old men who don't know that when you walk past them on the sidewalk where they re sweeping leaves, they should stop sweeping. But now it occurs to me that maybe these old men have maladies diseases that affect their manners-and should be pardoned.”

“This is all so messed up. I think what it is, is that when I was young, my mother was her best version of herself. And here I am, now, a shitty grown-up, and messing it all up, and a disappointment.

What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we can care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person- -what we felt about that person. Here's the fear: she gave to us, and we took from her, unti she disappeared.“

“I've been having the same dream every night this week- a dream serialized. It picks up, every night, where it left off the night before. It must have something to do with the heat.
In the dream, we are all together- you, Mom, Linus, me-living in a big house. We have pets. We have fifty-eight dogs, all types and breeds. You feed them and you care for them and you are yourself again; you can remember everything.

The first night, the first dream, a Labrador runs away, and you are so upset. In the dream we go looking for her; we post signs around the neighborhood. But she's nowhere to be found; she's gone for good. And we notice that you have forgotten the past year's events. After that it's a dachshund, and then a poodle. And the more dogs that run away, the more you forget.

Finally, we realize what's been happening. You've been using the dogs as mnemonic devices to recall whole vears.

You were connecting eyes and ears to specific feelings or events of a given twelve months; a baseball game to a shade of pupil, a fishing trip to a puppy's nail. After ten dogs run away you can't remember anything from the past ten years. And then it's fif-teen. And then you forget Linus. And then you forget me.

Mom can know without counting when there are thirty dogs left. She can recognize you at age thirty, when you first met: firt-ing, earnest, trying so hard to impress her.

Last night I dreamt that there were six dogs left. In the dream, you sat on the floor running your hands over a retriever the color of pale hay.”

Content Warnings