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 (Unknown); English (Original Language); 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: The Cost of Connecting...
Summary: 5 Stars

What is the cost of family connections? What is the cost of severing them? Julia Lambert asks these questions during a traumatic time in her family's lives.

An artist and professor, Julia departs to her summer home in Maine, to try and connect with her tyrannical father, a former surgeon now retired, and her aging mother, suffering from signs of early Alzheimer's disease. In her father's presence, Julia feels anger. Constantly. She tries to delve into it, to understand it. She remembers moments in their shared pasts. Nothing seems to erase the feeling.

Divorced, Julia has won the old Maine farmhouse in the settlement. It is badly in need of repairs, but she still feels more connected to herself in this place. She hopes that here she can begin to repair the damaged relationships in her life. Her ex-husband, Wendell, has remarried and appears to be reclaiming his life, separate from her and the rest of the family. She struggles against the resentment she feels.

But then, as if blown in by a hurricane, the news of her youngest son's heroin addiction is revealed and takes over all their lives. From the first moments, as the family members try to bring Jack to Maine for an intervention, and hopefully, for treatment, their focus is on him and his disease.

It is not an easy thing, convincing Jack to come to Maine to meet with his family. They have to almost "bribe" him, paying outstanding debts and personally accompanying him---this task has become Wendell's.

Once Jack has arrived at the house, nothing is simple at all. The expert in rehab that they've brought in to help with the intervention seems arrogant, albeit knowledgeable. They all find themselves fighting against their own feelings. And then Jack does something that seems to tilt their whole plan on its axis. From then on, the path to eventual rehabilitation is circuitous and bewildering. With family members trying to do their part in the intervention, it all seemingly unwinds and falls flat. Eventually, though, he is admitted into a rehab facility. But, again, nothing goes according to plan.

In the midst of the chaos that is now her life, Julia manages to put together an art show and secure tenure as a professor at her New York university. But her life is never the same again.

And in the fraught-filled days ahead, she comes to know the terrible costs of addiction...For her, for her family, and for her son.

Gracing us with a poignant glimpse into the seamy side of life, this author reveals much when she shows us the addict's perspective on several occasions in the story. We see the desperation, the gritty need, and the panic, as the addict shoves aside all of his prior knowledge of how to behave in this world, in search of that euphoric high. We feel his fear, his angst, and his pain.

Troubling though it is, this tale brings us back to those initial questions: What is the cost when family relationships are broken? Can anything be repaired?

Cost: A Novel was so compelling that I couldn't wait to find out how things ended for this family.







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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