"Scarily good . . . I've never read such a spot-on description of the mingled feelings of affection and frustration one feels for one's parents as Robinson spins out here with sometimes comic effect . . . One of our best writers."—The Washington Post

"Cost is both lyrical and unsentimental, richly honest and humane—summer reading of uncommon stature."—The Wall Street Journal

"Set mostly in a Maine summerhouse more charming than functional, this is a strikingly realistic, psychologically astute study of family relations in modern America's educated class. As in a family itself, competing perceptions of events past and present crowd the pages. Self-involved preoccupations overwhelm many touching moments of understanding; defensive postures become hurtful habits nearly impossible to shift. But when compared with the single-minded obsession of the younger son, whose heroin addiction organizes the plot, the degree to which the rest of the characters value and care for one another, despite their normal measure of self-interest, is arresting. Robinson gracefully launches and bolsters her psychological insights with concrete details of her settings. As always, she writes with impressive polish at both the sentence and structural levels."—The Atlantic Monthly

"Cost is such an apt title for the latest book of novelist and Mount Desert summer resident Roxana Robinson. In the novel, much of which is set in Maine, the cost to Julia Lambert, the protagonist, and to her immediate and extended family of her son Jack’s heroin addiction cannot be quantified, nor can the cost of the alienation between Julia and her aging parents. In reading this novel—even when some of the details made me uncomfortable—I cannot ignore how Robinson’s characters exemplify people I know and how perceptively she depicts them. As the plot unfolds, the reader slowly realizes not only that the costs are searing and exist on so many levels—psychological, emotional, financial, physiological—but also that various characters in their interior monologues frequently allude to 'risk.' And taking risks incurs costs. Robinson’s mastery of the interior monologue gives the narrative depth and intimacy. One identifies with the character and intuits what may occur. While Jack’s heroin addiction is not immediately known, the reminiscences of his parents, brother and grandparents’ throughout the novel reveal that Jack has always courted trouble. ‘Jack always went too far. His exploits were too perilous, the risks always too great,’ recalls Steven, his older brother. But the costs in the novel extend beyond the cost of heroin addiction and alienation. There are the emotional costs of losing a beloved son, and there are the physical, mental and emotional costs of aging. Robinson effectively portrays these costs, particularly in her characteriz