Cost

"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.

A fascinating read, the book features first person narrative from three generations of the same family reunited in a lovely old cottage on the Maine coast. The grandparents face inevitable losses that come with old age, including diminished physical capabilities, and the realization of the grandmother's approaching dementia, particularly painful for the grandfather, a former Neurosurgeon. The parents have emerged from a barely healed divorce and now cope with their heroin addicted adult son, as the son battles painful withdrawal, and all the indignities of an addict's lifestyle.

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.

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".