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Overview
Julia Lambert, an artist, is spending the summer in her old Maine farmhouse. During a visit from her elderly parents, she hopes to mend complicated relationships with her domineering father, a retired neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into the fog of Alzheimer's. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julia's son, Jack, has spiraled into heroin addiction. In her attempts to save him, Julia marshals help from her loosely knit clan, but Jack's addiction courses through the family with a devastating energy, sweeping them all into a world of confusion, fear, and obsession. In Cost, Roxana Robinson applies her "trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life" and creates a "warmly human and deeply satisfying book, marking a new level of ambition and achievement for this talented author" (Chicago Tribune).
Synopsis
"Roxana Robinson is a master at moving from the art of description to the work of excavating the truths about ourselves." -Billy Collins
The New York Times - Leah Hager Cohen
Robinson has been perennially and somewhat reductively tagged a chronicler of WASP life. This designation, while factually accurate—as is the observation that her stories regularly address parenting and marital issues—doesn't do her justice. These subjects—WASP life, domestic life—are often used as code for "small," in the sense of both trivial and mean, and Robinson's fiction is neither. In writing about characters whose lives are constrained, she makes them loom largeCost is unusual for being as plot-driven as it is character-driven, and the assured manner in which Robinson builds toward the inevitable train wreck is matched by her acuity in bringing us inside the characters' minds.
Editorials
From the Publisher
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE A WASHINGTON POST TOP FIVE BOOK OF THE YEARA SEATTLE TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Artfully portrays a family transformed by the far-reaching consequences of a son's heroin addiction."—Vanity Fair
"Cost applies Roxana Robinson's trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life. . . . A warmly human and deeply satisfying book, marking a new level of ambition and achievement for this talented author."—Chicago Tribune
"Scarily good . . . with such fierce moments of anxiety and grief, this is, frankly, a challenging novel to read, but Robinson's insight makes it impossible to break away."—The Washington Post
"Pitch-perfect . . . Cost is unusual for being as plot-driven as it is character-driven, and the assured manner in which Robinson builds toward the inevitable train wreck is matched by her acuity in bringing us inside the characters’ minds."—The New York Times Book Review
"Cost is unsparing but not bleak. It is both lyrical and unsentimental, richly honest and humane—summer reading of uncommon stature."—The Wall Street Journal
"Gripping . . . Robinson paints a chilling portrait of addiction."—People
"An emotionally incisive story about change—the permeable bonds between family members and an individual's fluctuating sense of self."—Time Out (New York)
"[A] piercing novel . . . Robinson has always been a sensitive and revelatory writer, but she attains new degrees of intensity here. . . . Her illuminations of the churning inner lives of her smart and deep-feeling characters depict good people facing brutal forces beyond the reach of reason and love."—Booklist
Leah Hager Cohen
Robinson has been perennially and somewhat reductively tagged a chronicler of WASP life. This designation, while factually accurate—as is the observation that her stories regularly address parenting and marital issues—doesn't do her justice. These subjects—WASP life, domestic life—are often used as code for "small," in the sense of both trivial and mean, and Robinson's fiction is neither. In writing about characters whose lives are constrained, she makes them loom largeCost is unusual for being as plot-driven as it is character-driven, and the assured manner in which Robinson builds toward the inevitable train wreck is matched by her acuity in bringing us inside the characters' minds.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Julia Lambert is a New York art professor spending the summer in Maine with her elderly father, a domineering neurosurgeon, and mother, a gentle soul succumbing to Alzheimer's. Julia's oldest son, Steven, joins the clan as tragic news surfaces: her second son, Jack, is addicted to heroin. Ex-husband Wendell, Julia's distant sister Harriet and Jack himself soon arrive, and intervention is on the agenda. Jack refuses to go quietly, and Robinson, who has worked in multiple genres (including penning a biography of Georgia O'Keeffe), engulfs the clan in a sea of resentment and repressed hostility, spiked with the intermittent need to feel close. Her unrelenting look at the deep physical and mental distress involved in heroin abuse is not for the faint of heart, with key portions of the drama unfolding through descriptions of Jack's perpetually itching skin, twitching muscles, heaving stomach, needle-tracked arms and addled brain. While the omniscient narration sometimes loses focus, Robinson offers adept closeups of family trauma. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
The mildly strained Lambert family is in terrible trouble. New York art professor Julia is spending the summer in her ramshackle Maine home with her very elderly parents. Julia's older son, Steven, arrives for a visit and shatters the surface serenity with his suspicion that his younger brother, Jack, is a heroin addict spiraling out of control. When Steve's worst fears are confirmed, Julia's ex-husband, Wendell, brings Jack to Maine for an intervention, conducted by Ralph Carpenter, a tough ex-addict who runs a Florida recovery program. Robinson's fourth novel (after Sweetwater) spares her fictional family nothing in this tale of hell. Each of the Lamberts is forced to look down the wrong end of the heroin needle, one horrific, sordid, heartbreaking detail after another. With exquisitely raw honesty, Robinson offers no hope for this nearly always-deadly addiction. As Jack's descent picks up speed toward the end, the Lamberts are drowning in the kind of intolerable grief borne of having to mourn the loss of a loved one before the heart stops beating. Highly recommended.
—Beth E. Andersen