Customer Reviews

Cost: A Novel

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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".

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.

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.

It's early in the year so you never know, but it will be an amazing reading year if this one isn't at or near the top of my best-of-the-year list come December. Incredibly compelling and moving. So many elements so well interwoven: the complex world of parenting, the awkward relationships we have with our siblings,the experience of losing a parent or a spouse to Alzheimers. I don't think I've ever seen the idea of the adult child still needing to be the good child delivered so thoughtfully. I find myself thinking of George Eliot, in the way Robinson delivers such realness in fiction.

Robinson is a brilliant writer, and here, in Cost, she delves into the unthinkable: a family dealing with a son's drug addiction. Beautifully written--and at times harrowing to read because of the pitch-perfect details about addiction-- Cost is really a stunning achievement that is both literate and page-turning.

"Cost" begins as if it's going to be another of the family dramas Roxana Robinson's done so well before ("This Is My Daughter," "Sweetwater"). Julia Lambert, an artist and Columbia professor, is spending the summer at her decaying home in Maine. She's divorced and doesn't know how/can't afford to fix it up. She's ineffectual in dealing with her aging parents, Edward and Katharine. As the first-person narrative leaps back and forth among the characters (the pov changes within scenes--daring, but it works) we discover that her mother is beginning to lose her memory while her father, a retired neurosurgeon, is frustrated by his increasing frailty.

Soon Julia's elder son, Steven, turns up. He's abandoned his West-Coast tree-hugging days and announces his intention to apply to law school. He brings with him, too, terrifying news: on his way up, he'd stopped off in Brooklyn to see his younger brother, Jack. He's the family flake, and now it appears he's on heroin to boot.

When Julia pries this out of Steven (a prig more than somewhat, he seems to feel he's somehow ratting his brother out), she decides to summon her ex-husband Wendell and her sister Harriet (they don't like each other much) to a family conference.

Well, you know how this is going to go, don't you? Family conference, old issues to be hashed out, Jack goes to rehab--yes, yes, yes. Tears. Laughter. Slow fade . . . . er no. The tale turns noirish and takes on thriller aspects as it explores the experience of a junkie's death spiral. There are two absolutely harrowing scenes toward the end, one dealing with the two brothers in a boat (to say nothing of the lifejacket); to describe the other would be a spoiler.

It's riveting.

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.

I love Roxana Robinson's fiction--she writes of upper middle class Northeastern intellectuals who can't quite afford their Maine summer cottages, and who have the sort of problems such privilege cannot insulate them from: broken marriages, aging parents, and children who re fiercely loved but not always skillfully parented. This book adds to the mix, dramatically, an adult child who is addicted to heroin. Woof!

The layered points of view within a scene skillfully illuminate how mistaken we can be about those whom we love the most and how misunderstood we are. The huge wallop of the heroin addiction doesn't completely obliterate the nuanced portrait of a "loosely-knit family." Even without the Jack storyline, I would want to read about this family--the academic artist mother, her elderly brain surgeon father and early-stage Alzheimers mother, her tree-hugger other son, her "disappointment" veterinarian sister, her ex-husband--all set in a cluttered, moldy Maine seaside summer cottage. Add the drama of Jack, and you have a very well-written page turner.

Robinson did an amazing job in addressing the sandwich generation's (caretakers of kids and aging parents simultaneously) worst nightmare come true. The most striking point was Julia's realization that all her love and nurturing would not be enough to save those she loved the most. Yes, this story does revolve around a child's heroin addiction and the way the entire family is affected by it but there is so much more to the story and the reader gets a 360 degree view as if they are sitting in the middle of a revolving circle watching each scene play out as its own separate theme. Robinson is a terrific author and this book, although sad, is a great one.

I couldn't put "Cost" down, and finished it in a few days. The story is a sad one, but I found it engrossing because of the detailed depictions of three generations of characters--particularly the protagonist's dignifed and likeable mother, who is losing her memory to Alzheimer's. Much praise has been written already about the realistic descriptions of heroin addiction (from several points of view, including Jack the addict's),and I agree, the author has really accomplished something extrordinary with this. I liked this book so much that I spent several weeks this summer reading the author's other novels, and I enjoyed them all, but "Cost" really stands out for its detail and honesty. Mary Lee Moser, author, There and Back: A Journal Companion for Special Needs Parents