Cost: A Novel
by Roxana Robinson
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Book Reviews of Cost: A Novel
Book Review: "All new from here on. We haven't been here before."
Summary: 5 Stars
As the Lambert family gathers at their somewhat dilapidated summer place in Maine, Julia is navigating the treacherous waters of her relationship with elderly parents. Ex-husband, Wendell, has remarried, ceding the house to Julia in the divorce. Not in a most desirable location, nevertheless Julia loves this house for all its flaws, the rotting deck planks, the leak under the bathroom sink. Julia's current troubles extend only to the potential problems with her parents, a rigid, authoritarian father, a delicate mother whose mind is fragmenting with each passing day. With the arrival of her twenty-four year old son, Steven, Julia relaxes. Inquiring after her younger boy, Jack, Julia is confronted with information she is ill prepared to process. Jack, a musician, is living in squalor in New York. The family has long supported Jack's itinerant lifestyle, but Steven intimates serious trouble, although loyal to his brother and their lifetime of shared experiences. But Steven cannot ignore what he has seen, the horrifying reality of his once-charmed brother's choices. There is a new, terrible member of the family: heroin.
Everyone used to the recurring dramas of Jack's life, this latest information has ramifications too dire to contemplate. As they have done with all Jack's "emergencies", the Lamberts go into overdrive. Julia contacts Wendell, conferring over the best course of action. Julia wants a family meeting; Wendell wants an intervention. But first someone must bring Jack to Maine. This family has weathered a difficult divorce, the elderly parents seemingly the next issue on the horizon, as well as Steven's struggle with a career choice. But suddenly everything is moot. What is wrong with Jack is serious, life-threatening. Like it or not, this extended family must join forces to confront Jack and implore him to change. Personal concerns, so beautifully detailed with each character, are diminished in the face of this terrible threat, a drug that steals souls and wreaks havoc on anyone in its path.
The denouement is devastating, the family confrontation, the knowledgeable, if smug Ralph Carpenter, arriving to do an intervention. Everyone resents Carpenter's intrusion, but he has ready answers and all they have are questions. At the center of all, Jack squirms with discomfort, enduring his ordeal by imagining his next fix, his escape from these people who are attacking him. Charming Jack is no more, replaced by an angry, frustrated junkie, no longer part of this intimate circle. Robinson's treatment of this story (particularly the intervention), an innocent, vaguely troubled family blindsided the destruction of a son, is harrowing, the detritus of everyday concerns a luxury in the face of Jack's addiction. Chaos, jail, intervention; all are on the table before the stunned parents and brother facing decisions they cannot bear to make. The Lamberts face an implacable and patient enemy; this is a landscape of nightmarish proportions, a minefield few escape unscathed. Luan Gaines/2009.
Book Review: Exacting Narrative of the Cost of Addiction
Summary: 5 Stars
It would have been enough if this was a story about a busy academic with two kids, an ex-husband, and a pair of problematic parents. There is plenty to explore in that set of relationships alone. That is the tightrope that Julia, the heroine of Cost, faces prior to the moment when she realizes that her youngest son is addicted to heroin.
At the beginning of this novel, Julia's parents are visiting her home in Maine. Her mother is slipping in to the throes of dementia. Her father, a retired neurosurgeon, is cruel. His sense of his own professional accomplishment gets in the way of his relationships with his family.
It permeates each character's notion of their own identity. The father's pride seems to spawn hurt in almost every member of the family. The author takes time to let us understand the feelings of each character. I like that about this writer. She is exact.
Sometimes the best way to describe something is through an artifact. One of my favorite passages concerns a set of keys. Julia had given her ex a little bauble for the keychain on a car, but she kept the car after the divorce. When he visits, the keychain rattles against the dash on the ride home, reminding both of the uneasy break in their lives.
The book is largely about the slow fall of Jack, the youngest son, into heroin addiction. Again, the father's knowledge is somewhat of a problem, as he only wants to look at the issue from a clinical perspective. "Exogenous opiates, not good," he says. I learned some things from this author. She has obviously done some research.
The other interesting thing about this book is a subplot that concerns idealistic people working in non-profits. Robinson populates other novels with these types. Sweetwater, for example, centers on a woman who works on water issues for the Environmental Protection Fund. In this instance, twenty-something Stephen is literally a "tree-hugger," yet he feels angry at the naivete of his actions and the simplicity of the leaders who he has worked for in his young years.
I read this book in six days. I could not put it down. This book would be great for book clubs. There is so much to think about here, from issues of addiction, to broken relationships, to balancing out work and family.
Book Review: Got significantly better in the last chapter
Summary: 3 Stars
I picked up Cost after a great review in the Washington Post. Until the last chapter I was underwhelmed. Roxana Robinson's writing is good, but in my opinion, has a tendency to be overcooked. On about 10 occasions I found myself speed reading through sections of the book because they were just too drawn out (the boat rescue as an example). In other areas, however, I savored the writing and would re-read a sentence or paragraph because it was so well wrought.
I did not like the characters. They were not particularly interesting or complex to me. I found them dull and unlikable. Even the most developed mother, Julia, fell short of being either complex or likeable (pitiful, yes). As an artist and college professor, I would think some of Julia's dialogue would be more sophisticated, intelligent, emotionally nuanced. Instead, a lot of what she said and thought seemed so juvenile to me. The hard-headed dictatorial father, the soft and cheery mother, the aloof and chilly sister, the tree-hugging tormented brother were all stereotypical.
In all, I was disppointed in the characters because I guess they all seemed like characters I could have come up with if I had written a book myself. I love to read to see and marvel at writers' varied and amazing creativity that is so much beyond my own. In this regard, the book disappointed.
(SPOILER ALERT) Because of the poignancy of the last chapter, however, I added 2 stars to what would otherwise be a one star review for me. In the last chapter, the focus shifted from the story of trying to get Jack into rehab, to after he's gone into rehab, told from his mother Julia's point of view. I loved the way the author made the shift, very softly. I also loved the unexpected emotions of Julia. Tormented by Jack's failure in rehab and halfway houses (alluded to but thankfully not belabored much), Julia never knows where Jack is, has long since lost all trust of him, and realizes that he is beyond help. She is in a slow and never-ending torture of worry and torment. The only relief from this she has is Jack's ultimate death. The author wrote and handled the last chapter absolutely equisitely. This was a nice ending salvage for an otherwise so-so book.
The jacket painting is beautiful.
Book Review: The Cost of Connections
Summary: 5 Stars
This book rises far above the usual tragedy genre; it delves into the true cost of an addiction on parents, sibling, and extended family and it doesn't strike one false note. It's a true page-turner and by the end of the book, you'll feel as if you know each of these characters intimately as if they were flesh-and-blood neighbors. That's rare praise for a work of fiction.
COST presents the point of view of each character individually: Julia, the very human divorced mother, her ex-husband Wendell, her neurosurgeon autocratic father, her memory-challenged mother, her conflicted older son Steven... and Jack, her heroin-addicted younger son who draws the entire clan into a web of fear, recriminations, and struggle for too-late connections.
Roxana Robinson doesn't flinch in describing the cost of addiction, nor does she preach. We, the readers, see the cost from all angles: what it does to the brain (through the eyes of the neurosurgeon grandfather), what it does to the body, and most of all, what it does to the soul. We learn that for most heroin addicts -- the vast majority -- rehab is only an illusion and death is the likely result. And we view how that knowledge affects the day-to-day lives of those most intimately involved.
Some pages are so devastating that they are painful to read; some strike notes of accord as we relate them to our own struggling family relationships and how "something in the blood makes them kin, keeps them apart."
It's a true tour de force presented with passion, compassion, perceptiveness, and an eagle eye for details. This should be required reading for every would-be drug user. And it certainly is recommended reading for each of us who love perfectly-realized characters in situations that are not of their making.
Book Review: The best book I've read all summer, maybe all year
Summary: 5 Stars
There were so many things that I liked about this book that I'm not sure where to start. Robinson's characters came truly alive for me. She switches viewpoint quite frequently, but it was not confusing, and the technique helped to make more vivid each of the family members. None of the characters was completely likeable or totally flawed, and I found myself caring about each one. The author deals with so many big questions: what does it mean to be a family? how much responsibility do we bear ourselves and how much is a legacy that we can't avoid? how do the mind and body work together to define us and make us who we are? Katharine's realization that she has Alzheimer's is heart-breaking, but even more so is her husband's belated realization of what her slipping away will mean to him. Harriet found a place in my heart because of her understanding of and empathy for animals. My sole criticism is that perhaps too much time was spent describing the symptoms of addiction (about which I knew almost nothing, but by the final chapters, I knew a little more than I needed to). Other than that, I couldn't put this book down. It was a gripping story that will stay with me for a long time. I borrowed COST from the library, but I plan to purchase it when it comes out in paperback. There are many passages that I want to reread, and many issues that I want to think about some more. Our book group has already made its selections for the coming year, and I am so sorry that this is not one of them. Absolutely top flight!