Cost - Hardcover

Robinson, Roxana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374271879 ISBN 13: 9780374271879

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

‘Robinson’s prose is measured and elegant...an unsparing, unsentimental look at an addict’s grievous self-absorption and the damage done to the family who love him.’ Daily Mail

‘“Cost” is both lyrical and unsentimental, richly honest and humane...reading of uncommon stature.' Wall Street Journal

'Scarily good...what gives the story such emotional depth is Robinson's astute portrayal of the private anxieties that each family member harbors. [Robinson] has crept into corners of human experience each of us is terrified to approach.' Washington Post

‘Robinson has always been a sensitive and revelatory writer, but she attains new degrees of intensity here in her scorching depictions of the nightmare world of addiction. Her illuminations of the churning inner lives of her smart and deep feeling characters depict good people facing brutal forces beyond the reach of reason or love.’ Booklist (starred review)

‘A novelist drawn to the emotional dynamics inside families, Robinson here depicts the crisis unleashed by one parent's discovery of her child's self-destructive secret.’ Good Housekeeping

‘Artfully portrays a family transformed by the far-reaching consequences of a son's heroin addiction.’ Vanity Fair

‘Gripping...Robinson paints a chilling portrait of addiction. We can't always save each other, but there's a kind of redemption in the fight.’ People magazine

About the Author:

Roxana Robinson is the author of three earlier novels and three short-story collections, as well as a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, Best American Short Stories, and Vogue, among other publications. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches at the New School in New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0374271879
• ISBN 13: 9780374271879
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 420