Cost: A Novel

Cost: A Novel
by Roxana Robinson

Cost: A Novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: Roxana Robinson
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-10
ISBN: 0374271879
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Book Reviews of Cost: A Novel

Book Review: gratuitous unnecessary political commentary
Summary: 1 Stars

If you want to learn about heroin addiction copy the resouces listed in Robinson's acknowledgements,then read those. If you want to read about how awful George W. Bush is read the New York Times, or listen to NPR, or watch NBC TV. It's impossible to read any current novel, or watch any movie without the writer, director or editor injecting his/her negative opinion about GW Bush. Someone please explain to me how the author's opinion about Bush has anything to do with the narrative of this novel.

Summary of Cost: A Novel

THE LUMINOUS AND GRIPPING NEW NOVEL FROM "ONE OF OUR BEST WRITERS" (JONATHAN YARDLEY, THE WASHINGTON POST)

When Julia Lambert, an art professor, settles into her idyllic Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her fragile relationships with her father, a repressive neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into Alzheimer's. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julia's son Jack has spiraled into heroin addiction.

In an attempt to save him, Julia marshals help from her looseknit clan: elderly parents; remarried ex-husband; removed sister; and combative eldest son. Ultimately, heroin courses through the characters' lives with an impersonal and devastating energy, sweeping the family into a world in which deceit, crime, and fear are part of daily life.

Roxana Robinson is the author of Sweetwater, which Booklist called a "hold-your-breath novel of loss and love." Billy Collins praised Robinson as "a master at moving from the art of description to the work of excavating the truths about ourselves."

In Cost, Robinson tackles addiction and explores its effects on the bonds of family, dazzling us with her hallmark subtlety and precision in evoking the emotional interiors of her characters. The result is a work in which the reader's sense of discovery and compassion for every character remains unflagging to the end, even as the reader, like the characters, is caught up in Cost's breathtaking pace.

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