
Cost
Roxana Robinson(Author)
HarperPerennial (Publisher)
Published on 19. January 2009
Book
Paperback/Softback
432 pages
978-0-00-728453-5 (ISBN)
Description
Powerful, moving and gripping, this is an extraordinary novel about the ways that secrets and lies can tear a family apart.
When Julia Lambert settles into her idyllic Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her fragile relationship with her father, a retired but demanding neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending, unnoticed, into Alzheimer's. But a shattering revelation intrudes: her youngest son Jack, far from being the charming and much-loved maverick of the family, has spiralled into heroin addiction.
Desperate to save him, Julia calls on all the members of her loose-knit family: her elderly parents; remarried ex-husband; detached sister; and combative eldest son. As heroin sweeps through each of their lives, with its impersonal and devastating energy, it drags the family into a world in which deceit, crime and fear are part of daily life.
In her cool, elegant prose, Robinson delivers a novel of loss and love that is complex, surprising and breathtaking in its pace.
When Julia Lambert settles into her idyllic Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her fragile relationship with her father, a retired but demanding neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending, unnoticed, into Alzheimer's. But a shattering revelation intrudes: her youngest son Jack, far from being the charming and much-loved maverick of the family, has spiralled into heroin addiction.
Desperate to save him, Julia calls on all the members of her loose-knit family: her elderly parents; remarried ex-husband; detached sister; and combative eldest son. As heroin sweeps through each of their lives, with its impersonal and devastating energy, it drags the family into a world in which deceit, crime and fear are part of daily life.
In her cool, elegant prose, Robinson delivers a novel of loss and love that is complex, surprising and breathtaking in its pace.
Reviews / Votes
'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
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers
Product notice
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
285 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-00-728453-5 (9780007284535)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Roxana Robinson is the author of four novels and three short-story collections, as well as one biography. Four of her works have been named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine and Vogue, among other publications, and she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.