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. Lead title / A gripping and moving novel which will appeal to readers of Anne Tyler, Alice Sebold, Maggie O'Farrell. / Reads like 'The Corrections' meets 'A Million Little Pieces'. / Ideal for reading groups with great potential for the Richard & Judy Book Club selection. / Named by the National Book Critics Circle as one of their 'Good Reads' for Spring 2008. / Published in the US in June 2008 by FSG.
Roxana Robinson is the author of three novels and three short-story collections. 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.
'"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 PRAISE FOR ROXANA ROBINSON 'Start in on any sentence and I'm absolutely sure you'll read to the end of the story, and of the book, and you'll come out of it feeling grateful, deeply stirred, seriously happy' Alice Munro 'Elegantly written yet emotionally raw ! [with] the urgency of an unputdownable thriller' Washington Post 'Robinson's finely tuned realism, as well as her settings and characters recall Cheever and Updike. She approaches the huge misunderstandings of family life from many angles and anything but timidly. Her ear is wonderful, her graceful prose a real pleasure' Publisher's Weekly (starred review) 'A hold-your-breath novel of loss and love' Booklist
'"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 PRAISE FOR ROXANA ROBINSON 'Start in on any sentence and I'm absolutely sure you'll read to the end of the story, and of the book, and you'll come out of it feeling grateful, deeply stirred, seriously happy' Alice Munro 'Elegantly written yet emotionally raw ! [with] the urgency of an unputdownable thriller' Washington Post 'Robinson's finely tuned realism, as well as her settings and characters recall Cheever and Updike. She approaches the huge misunderstandings of family life from many angles and anything but timidly. Her ear is wonderful, her graceful prose a real pleasure' Publisher's Weekly (starred review) 'A hold-your-breath novel of loss and love' Booklist
Julia Lambert is a New York art professor spending the summer in Maine with her elderly father, a domineering neurosurgeon, and mother, a gentle soul succumbing to Alzheimer's. Julia's oldest son, Steven, joins the clan as tragic news surfaces: her second son, Jack, is addicted to heroin. Ex-husband Wendell, Julia's distant sister Harriet and Jack himself soon arrive, and intervention is on the agenda. Jack refuses to go quietly, and Robinson, who has worked in multiple genres (including penning a biography of Georgia O'Keeffe), engulfs the clan in a sea of resentment and repressed hostility, spiked with the intermittent need to feel close. Her unrelenting look at the deep physical and mental distress involved in heroin abuse is not for the faint of heart, with key portions of the drama unfolding through descriptions of Jack's perpetually itching skin, twitching muscles, heaving stomach, needle-tracked arms and addled brain. While the omniscient narration sometimes loses focus, Robinson offers adept closeups of family trauma. (June) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
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