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One of the best books about addiction I’ve ever read — she makes it so visceral and real and terrifying, and shows you the damage, not just to the addict but to generations of extended family. Instead of shouting ‘Don’t do drugs!‘ at my kids when they head off for college, I’ll give them this book.”

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Cost is unusual for being as plot-driven as it is character-driven, and the assured manner in which Robinson builds toward the inevitable train wreck is matched by her acuity in bringing us inside the characters’ minds…”

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The author of Sweetwater (2003) and several short-story collections, Robinson subtly conflates nature and human concerns as a crisis brings estranged family members together at Julia’s weathered home on the coast of Maine.”

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This is simply one of the most heart-wrenching and powerful novels I have ever read.”

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Robinson’s vivid, sensuous prose moves effortlessly among relationships and points of view, evoking a brutal war between familial love—in its infinite power and mystery—and the mechanical devastations of pathology.”

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With passion, feeling, and a keen eye for detail, Roxana Robinson brings chillingly to life a family and a family tragedy, showing us how—like a luminous yet ominous landscape—their tangible visible world can coincide with the invisible tumultuous world of their emotions.”

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With such fierce moments of anxiety and grief, this is, frankly, a challenging novel to read, but Robinson’s insight makes it impossible to break away. She has crept into corners of human experience each of us is terrified to approach: the loss of our children, our parents, our minds, the implacable tragedies that shred our sense of how the world should work. Toward the end, Robinson writes, ‘There was now a great silent ringing where the sky had been.’ Like every moment in this novel, that sounds chillingly right.”

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Cost is stunning. Each of the characters is so perfectly realized, each is made known to us with such heart and intelligence. This is a very big book: the territory of family is more fragile and dangerous than any geography weknow, and Roxana Robinson has made life of that. I loved, admired, and was frankly undone by every minute of it.”

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Roxana Robinson’s Cost artfully portrays a family transformed by the far-reaching consequences of a son’s heroin addiction.”

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Cost is both lyrical and unsentimental, richly honest and humane—summer reading of uncommon stature.”