Cost: A Novel
by Roxana Robinson
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Book Reviews of Cost: A Novel
Book Review: Insightful and Wise
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: 400 Page Episode of "Intervention"
Summary: 3 Stars
This book didn't live up to the hypge that surrounded it when it came out, but it was still a very interesting read. Few authors inhabit the minds of their characters as intricately and realistically as Ms Robinson has here. I won't reveal any plot points (there is really only 1) but I'll just say that I felt a tremendous sense of waste when it ended, both about the characters and the author. The book essentially puts a microscope on lives horribly mis-spent and it is both fascinating and crushingly depressing to peer down upon them. You can't not ask if you, too, are throwing away your years--maybe already threw them away and didn't know it. For this, I'm actually thankful to the author. The book woke me up and made me think about how I spend my time, how I interact with my family, what they think of me when I'm not with them. The second sense of waste I felt relates to the author's talents. If her ambition matched her skills, this would have been a completely different and better book--perhaps this book wouldn't have existed at all. She is capable of a sprawlingly complex novel and I hope she writes it--next.Book Review: A harrowing story of drug addiction...
Summary: 5 Stars
Roxanna Robinson - always a brilliant writer - takes the reader through the devastating emotional effect that heroin addiction brings to an entire family, as well as the physical effects it has on the addict. Not one member of 22- year old Jack's immediate family is spared the damage stemming from his drug addiction. Robinson bases most of the story on Jack, his divorced parents Julia and Wendell, and his older brother, Steven. But, she brings in other family members and some others outside the family, who have been pulled into the problems Jack has created by his addiction.
This is the story of a family - three generations - who have long been separated emotionally by misunderstandings. They are brought together in an attempt to deal with Jack's problems and in the process find some emotional healing with each other.
It is a great read. Robinson is unstinting in describing the family's turmoil and the book doesn't end in a wholly happy way, but it ends the way most things like this probably do end in "real life".
Book Review: brilliantly crafted work
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Book Review: A good storyline, but...
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm not sure if I can finish this book. I agree with the other reviewers who said the prose is unnecessarily flowery and the characters are sort of shallowly stereotypical. I can't bring myself to care about any of them or see them as real people. It's odd that several characters go off on the president in a way tangential and unrelated to the storyline (I could only hear the author's voice in those odd places), and also all enjoy using the phrase "amour propre." Um. I keep skimming to get to the meat of the story, and I don't like to read books that make me feel as though I need to do that. I'm a little bit curious but definitely not riveted.