Cost: A Novel | Roxana Robinson | The "Cost" of Addiction

Cost: A Novel | Roxana Robinson | Insightful and Wise

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Cost: A Novel

	Cost: A Novel Roxana Robinson Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The "Cost" of Addiction

The author of the wonderful "Sweetwater" has written another novel of relationships of the family. "Cost" is more harrowing with it plot arc of the intervention by a dysfunctional family with its heroin-addicted son. Told in the third person with dead-on observations, Ms. Robinson is a chronicler of the American family. It is the little details that she gets right and even the more annoying characters have their redemptive moments. The book is more dark than "Sweetwater" but more intricate and rewarding.

Insightful and Wise

I see that others have used the word "harrowing," which is exactly what I would call "Cost" as well. But reading it, through all the dangers and absolute dissolution that drugs do, can bring the reader enlightenment, grim as it may be.

"Cost" is a harrowing novel to read, not just because the focus is a heroin-addicted son.

Robinson clearly assesses the mindset of the two elderly parents, the two very different daughters, Julia and Harriet, and Julia's sons, Steven and Jack.

This is Jack's story. The picture of a heroin addict is excrutiating, and the family's pain is felt.

Julia's guilt and fear are matched by her egotistical father's awakening to the limitations of his own aging mind and body and his wife's gracious slip into dementia.

This dysfunctional family is probably not so different from that of many families where "father knows best," and no emotion is allowed to be shown or expressed. This is the first time I have read such a thorough and compelling assessment of growing up under those conditions.

An amazing book, but not an easy one to swallow.

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brilliantly crafted work

For people like myself who love good books and who want to write good books, Cost could easily be an intimidating read. An entire family--three generations--are forced to face the realities they had been avoiding. A family crisis occurs--Jack is addicted to heroin. His parents, divorced but civil, face their own demons. The octogenarian grandparents of Jack are truly fascinating characters by themselves--and how they have approached life is fully developed by Roxana Robinson in scenes that are as close up and intimate as any I have read. She is as brilliant in her art as is another writer who sets her work in Maine--Elizabeth Strout. No reader will be disappointed--overwhelmed at times, probably--but definitely not disappointed.

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Wrenching look at addiction

Robinson, a wonderful writer, has given us a wrenching look at the complexities of addicton.......the horrors for the addict and for everyone who is drawn into his world. She spares the reader none of the grim details as the family tries desperately to find answers and solutions....when there really are none.

The author is a master of character development, in this book and in all her other novels and stories. Her writing is a model for what good fiction should, and can, be.

Outstanding and absorbing

Wow, this one is a slice of life and you will feel like a fly on the wall reading this very realistic book. It has complicated family situations and I had strong feelings for the various characters, both good and bad. Now I want to know what happens to the family AFTER the end of the book...if their dynamics ever changed. Oh yeah, I forgot, this is fiction. Seriously, it is so absorbing that I felt the characters were real. Can't wait to read her other books. By the way, if you loved this, try the book "Need", also a psychological drama about her psychologist and her patients. Very heavy and excellent too.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5

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