Synopses & Reviews
THE LUMINOUS AND GRIPPING NEW NOVEL FROM ONE OF OUR BEST WRITERS” (JONATHAN YARDLEY, THE WASHINGTON POST) When Julia Lambert, an art professor, settles into her idyllic Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her fragile relationships with her father, a repressive neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into Alzheimers. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julias son Jack has spiraled into heroin addiction.
In an attempt to save him, Julia marshals help from her looseknit clan: elderly parents; remarried ex-husband; removed sister; and combative eldest son. Ultimately, heroin courses through the characters lives with an impersonal and devastating energy, sweeping the family into a world in which deceit, crime, and fear are part of daily life.
Roxana Robinson is the author of Sweetwater, which Booklist called a hold-your-breath novel of loss and love.” Billy Collins praised Robinson as a master at moving from the art of description to the work of excavating the truths about ourselves.”
In Cost, Robinson tackles addiction and explores its effects on the bonds of family, dazzling us with her hallmark subtlety and precision in evoking the emotional interiors of her characters. The result is a work in which the readers sense of discovery and compassion for every character remains unflagging to the end, even as the reader, like the characters, is caught up in Costs breathtaking pace.
Roxana Robinson is the author of four novels and three short-story collections, as well as a biography of Georgia OKeeffe. Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harpers Magazine, The New York Times, Best American Short Stories, and Vogue, among other publications. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches at the New School in New York. Named a 'Good Read' by the National Book Critics Circle
A Washington Post 10 Best Books of the Year
A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year
A Seattle Times Best Book of the Year
A Library Journal Best Book of the Year In Cost, Roxana Robinson tackles addiction and explores its effects on the bonds of family with her hallmark subtlety and precision in evoking the emotional interiors of her characters. The result is a work in which the readers compassion for every character remains unflagging to the end.
When Julia Lambert, an art professor, settles into her idyllic Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her fragile relationships with her father, a repressive neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into Alzheimers. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julias son Jack has spiraled into heroin addiction.
In an attempt to save him, Julia marshals help from her looseknit clan: elderly parents; remarried ex-husband; removed sister; and combative eldest son. Ultimately, heroin courses through the characters lives with an impersonal and devastating energy, sweeping the family into a world in which deceit, crime, and fear are part of daily life. "Robinsons fourth novel is an engrossing tale of a patrician familys unraveling during a summer in Maine. Julia Lambert is a divorced artist, trying to entertain her oppressive, former neurosurgeon father (he points out everything thats wrong with his daughters run-down cabin) and her self-effacing mother, who is in the early stages of Alzheimers. Julias elder son suspects that his younger brother, Jack, is a heroin addict, and when this turns out to be true an intervention is staged. The familys ugly, dysfunctional history pours out in the process, in sharp contrast with the halcyon setting. Robinson moves nimbly among the numerous characters mind-sets, and although Julias meditations on 'the long tradition of luminist painting' can drag, Jacks story maintains its tension until the final, affecting pages."The New Yorker
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 . . . [Julia] gains the strength not only to bear a grievous separation from her younger son but, more significant, to question the separations she has imposed on the most intimate relationships in her life. Why, she wonders, has she done this? . . . Robinson has already shown us why, having exhumed the many reasons in the preceding pages. But the question remains worth asking, not only by Julia but by any of these charactersby anyone, period, still struggling to connect. With the novels final words, which made me catch my breath, Robinson suggests the enormous stakes involved in pursuing the answer.”The New York Times Book Review
"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 Jacks heroin addiction cannot be quantified, nor can the cost of the alienation between Julia and her aging parents. In reading this noveleven when some of the details made me uncomfortableI cannot ignore how Robinsons 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 levelspsychological, emotional, financial, physiologicalbut also that various characters in their interior monologues frequently allude to 'risk.' And taking risks incurs costs. Robinsons mastery of the interior monologue gives the narrative depth and intimacy. One identifies with the character and intuits what may occur. While Jacks 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 characterization of Julia and Katharine, Julias 86-year-old mother who is in the early stages of Alzheimers . . . In a recent interview, Robinson said that a novelist must have compassion for her characters, and in Cost, which was a Spring 2008 Recommended Reads by the National Book Critics Circle, that compassion is in evidence everywhere."Anne Kozak, Mount Desert Islander
A sense of declinethat's the first thing you feel in Roxana Robinson's fourth novel. There's an unrelenting, inevitable sense of things marching downhill: elderly parents, old houses, relationships . . . With its New England setting, a family gathering, an addiction crisis, it might suggest some ponderous Eugene O'Neill play, but Robinsons novel actually feels more like a contemporary movie. In one nail-biting scene, the brothers fight in a small rowboat at night without lights, lifejackets, or paddles, and begin drifting out to sea. Why bother with such a sad story? One reason is Robinson's beautiful, haunting style. Though primarily told from a mother's point of view, she allows us inside all of the characters heads and hearts, where much is revealed. The Lambert family is a complex, conflicted bunch, flawed, yet sympathetic human beings who will get under your skin like a junkie's needle.”Carol O'Sullivan, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Many of the casualties of addiction are hidden from view. Roxanna Robinson's new novel explores the collateral damagespecifically, its impact on familieswith a deeply felt compassion, as she tells the story of a mother wrestling with the inner demons that haunt her youngest son . . . Robinson, author of Sweetwater, other well-received novels and a short story collection, delineates the tension in the worlds of her conflicted characters in absorbing, descriptive scenes. She reveals all the recriminations, self-blame and guilt of addiction's progress as the family members slowly realize how difficult it is to save another. In the end, it is Robinson's compassion for each of her characters that remains. Sometimes, compassion is the only offering possible."Steve Dyke, The Star-Ledger (Newark)
Robinson paints a chilling portrait of addiction, depicting heroin junkies in particular as ruthless in pursuit of their highs and rehab as hardly more than a crapshoot. Theres little solace here, except in the accumulation of wisdom and softening of old resentments at the books appealing, astutely drawn characters come together. We cant always save each other, but theres a kind of redemption in the fight.”People
An emotionally incisive story about changethe permeable bonds between family members and an individuals fluctuating sense of self. The book gets at these themes by dwelling on its characters shifting roles, from child to parent, from friend to lover, from nurtured to nurturer and back again . . . Robinson avoids cliché with her twisted characters and detailed, sometimes scathing observations . . . And while her focus is on the family, she captures what drives them apart just as well as what holds them together. The language is strongoccasionally lyrical but always tightand Robinsons penchant for detail eventually pushes this messy family drama to a succinct point: Relationships define who we are, whether we like it or not.”Chelsea Bauch, Time Out New York
Loss, grief and regret are the central subjects of Roxana Robinsons harrowing new novel, which applies the writers trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life to the darkest subject matter she has tackled to date . . . Robinson achieves a truly Shakespearean breadth of vision in this final scene, acknowledging that suffering can sharpen our understanding without minimizing the lasting damage it inflicts. Bleak though it undeniably is, Cost is also a warmly human and deeply satisfying book, marking a new level of ambition and achievement for this talented author.”Chicago Tribune
Roxana Robinson creates a psychologically mesmerizing family dynamic in the vortex of one son's drug addiction . . . Cost alternates close-up third-person points-of-view with ease and fluidity. Certain shifts of as many as three perspectives on a single page can be jarring, but mostly the technique works brilliantly to reveal the startlingly different accounts of what is happening inside the same small house.”Hartford Courant
Artfully portrays a family transformed by the far-reaching consequences of a sons heroin addiction.”Vanity Fair
"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 we know, and Roxana Robinson has made life of that. I loved, admired, and was frankly undone by every minute of it."Susan Richards Shreve, author of A Student of Living Things
"Roxana Robinson is surely one of the most graceful stylists and psychologically perceptive writers working. Cost approaches the subject of drugs impact from an original and very significant angle. This book shows further the extent of Robinsons insights into the whirl, the generational ironies at work, and the desperate indulgences to which we turn in our confusion. Cost is an important, timely book that furthers insight into our preset fortunes and dilemmas."Robert Stone, author of Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties
"Cost is a gritty portrait of the havoc wreaked upon a family by one member's drug addiction. Roxana Robinson's vivid, sensuous prose moves effortlessly among relationships and points of view, evoking a brutal war between familial lovein its infinite power and mysteryand the mechanical devastations of pathology."Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep
"With passion, feeling and a keen eye for detail, Roxana Robinson brings chillingly to life a family and a family tragedy, showing us howlike a luminous yet ominous landscapetheir tangible visible world can coincide with the invisible tumultuous world of their emotions."Lily Tuck, author of The News from Paraguay
"The novel Cost is a very gripping and superbly written story about the destructive effects of heroin addiction on the brain, mind, and soul of Jack Lambert and on his family. In addition to accurately describing 'an intervention,' Roxanna Robinson also provides superb information about the neurochemistry and neuroanatomy of addiction. She describes the concomitant cognitive, psychosocial, interpersonal, and psychodynamic distortions that both predispose to and are caused by the addiction. Ms. Robinson also beautifully describes the common regressions that can and often emerge at family gatherings, in which adults act more childlike than is ordinarily the case. The novel is in prose, but it is really a poem conveying the textures, tastes, sounds, colors, assumptions, lusts, banalities, hypocrisies, vanities, regrets, joys, iciness, warmth, smoothness, and stickiness of living, in a style ranging from luxuriant to spartan. When one first picks up this wonderful book, one is greeted on the book by a beautiful pastoral painting of a cottage on a hill. The painting has been shredded into four vertical strips that visually foretell the torn, misaligned, and yet fundamentally and curiously coherent quality of the Lambert family . . . In summary, I highly recommend Cost for anyone wanting to better understand the vicissitudes of our human condition and the tragedies of heroin addiction. Importantly, the novel is also about the centrality of memories and how each interaction either lovingly or cruelly creates a new memory and thus a new present and future."Baer Ackerman, Psychiatric Services
"The mildly strained Lambert family is in terrible trouble. New York art professor Julia is spending the summer in her ramshackle Maine home with her very elderly parents. Julia's older son, Steven, arrives for a visit and shatters the surface serenity with his suspicion that his younger brother, Jack, is a heroin addict spiraling out of control. When Steve's worst fears are confirmed, Julia's ex-husband, Wendell, brings Jack to Maine for an intervention, conducted by Ralph Carpenter, a tough ex-addict who runs a Florida recovery program. Robinson's fourth novel spares her fictional family nothing in this tale of hell. Each of the Lamberts is forced to look down the wrong end of the heroin needle, one horrific, sordid, heartbreaking detail after another. With exquisitely raw honesty, Robinson offers no hope for this nearly always-deadly addiction. As Jack's descent picks up speed toward the end, the Lamberts are drowning in the kind of intolerable grief borne of having to mourn the loss of a loved one before the heart stops beating."Beth E. Andersen, Library Journal
"Julia, a divorced artist and art professor in Manhattan, has two grown sons: responsible Steven, who has been working as a conservation activist in Seattle but is returning east to attend law school, and his younger brother Jack, an erstwhile musician who has always been the family risk-taker and troublemaker. The novel opens on the glum scene of Julia attempting to entertain her difficult, aging parents at her Maine vacation house. Already tense from trying to be a dutiful daughter despite her resentment toward her rigid father Edward and her impatience with her placid mother Katharine, who is actually losing her memory, Julia falls to pieces when Steven arrives and admits his suspicion that Jack has become a heroin addict. She immediately calls her ex-husband Wendell who goes to Jack's squalid apartment and drags him to Maine for a family intervention including distraught Edward and clueless Katharine. Before any real conversation can take place, Jack goes into withdrawal. A desperate Wendell calls 911, and Jack is hospitalized. The family now rally around professional interventionist Ralph Carpenter . . . At first Julia remains in partial denial, unable to grasp how grave Jack's condition is, but the 'hypnotic and dreadful' Ralph gives Julia and readers a full course in the horrors and hopelessness of heroin addiction . . . A fictional case study."Kirkus Reviews
Review
“Scarily good. . . what gives the story such emotional depth is Robinson’s astute portrayal of the private anxieties that each family member harbors—anxieties that often have little to do with Jack and the addiction that's killing him. Robinson has perfected a kind of rotating point of view that allows her to move gracefully, seamlessly from character to character so that we're privy to each person’s thoughts, one after another. 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. . . . 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.” —The Washington Post
“‘Cost’ is unsparing but not bleak. There is urgency in the narrative; you keep hoping for a rescue and you care about these complex people even when you want to shake them for behaving badly. There is bitter humor in the family's uneasy alliance with the rehab counselor. You could learn a lot from this novel about the family dynamics of addiction. But what makes Ms. Robinson much more than a very good reporter is her searching compassion for these flawed people. . . . ‘Cost’ is both lyrical and unsentimental, richly honest and humane—summer reading of uncommon stature.” —The Wall Street Journal
“‘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. . . .[Julia] gains the strength not only to bear a grievous separation from her younger son but, more significant, to question the separations she has imposed on the most intimate relationships in her life. Why, she wonders, has she done this? . . . Robinson has already shown us why, having exhumed the many reasons in the preceding pages. But the question remains worth asking, not only by Julia but by any of these characters—by anyone, period, still struggling to connect. With the novel’s final words, which made me catch my breath, Robinson suggests the enormous stakes involved in pursuing the answer.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Gripping . . . Robinson paints a chilling portrait of addiction, depicting heroin junkies in particular as ruthless in pursuit of their highs and rehab as hardly more than a crapshoot. There’s little solace here, except in the accumulation of wisdom and softening of old resentments at the book’s appealing, astutely drawn characters come together. We can’t always save each other, but there’s a kind of redemption in the fight.” —People
“Roxana Robinson’s latest novel, Cost, is an emotionally incisive story about change—the permeable bonds between family members and an individual’s fluctuating sense of self. The book gets at these themes by dwelling on its characters’ shifting roles, from child to parent, from friend to lover, from nurtured to nurturer and back again. . . . Robinson avoids cliché with her twisted characters and detailed, sometimes scathing observations. . . . And while her focus is on the family, she captures what drives them apart just as well as what holds them together. The language is strong—occasionally lyrical but always tight—and Robinson’s penchant for detail eventually pushes this messy family drama to a succinct point: Relationships define who we are, whether we like it or not.” —Chelsea Bauch, Time Out New York
“Loss, grief and regret are the central subjects of Roxana Robinson’s harrowing new novel, which applies the writer’s trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life to the darkest subject matter she has tackled to date. . . . Robinson achieves a truly Shakespearean breadth of vision in this final scene, acknowledging that suffering can sharpen our understanding without minimizing the lasting damage it inflicts. Bleak though it undeniably is, “Cost” is also a warmly human and deeply satisfying book, marking a new level of ambition and achievement for this talented author.” —Chicago Tribune
“In her forceful and gripping new novel, “Cost,” Roxana Robinson creates a psychologically mesmerizing family dynamic in the vortex of one son's drug addiction. . . . “Cost” alternates close-up third-person points-of-view with ease and fluidity. Certain shifts of as many as three perspectives on a single page can be jarring, but mostly the technique works brilliantly to reveal the startlingly different accounts of what is happening inside the same small house.” —Hartford Courant
“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, June
“Roxana Robinson’s novel Cost artfully portrays a family transformed by the far-reaching consequences of a son’s heroin addiction.” —Vanity Fair, June
“Cost is a gritty portrait of the havoc wreaked upon a family by one member's drug addiction. Roxana 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.”
—Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep
“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 we know, and Roxana Robinson has made life of that. I loved, admired, and was frankly undone by every minute of it.”
—Susan Richards Shreve, author of A Student of Living Things
“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.”
—Lily Tuck, author of The News from Paraguay
“Roxana Robinson is surely one of the most graceful stylists and psychologically perceptive writers working . . . Cost approaches the subject of drugs’ impact from an original and very significant angle. This book shows further the extent of Robinson’s insights into the whirl, the generational ironies at work, and desperate indulgences to which we turn in our confusion. Cost is an important timely book that furthers insight into our preset fortunes and dilemmas."
—Robert Stone, author of Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties
Review
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE
A WASHINGTON POST TOP FIVE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A SEATTLE TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Artfully portrays a family transformed by the far-reaching consequences of a son's heroin addiction."--Vanity Fair
"Cost applies Roxana Robinson's trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life. . . . A warmly human and deeply satisfying book, marking a new level of ambition and achievement for this talented author."--Chicago Tribune
"Scarily good . . . 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."--The Washington Post
"Pitch-perfect . . . 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."--The New York Times Book Review
"Cost is unsparing but not bleak. It is both lyrical and unsentimental, richly honest and humane--summer reading of uncommon stature."--The Wall Street Journal
"Gripping . . . Robinson paints a chilling portrait of addiction."--People
"An emotionally incisive story about change--the permeable bonds between family members and an individual's fluctuating sense of self."--Time Out (New York)
"[A] piercing novel . . . Robinson has always been a sensitive and revelatory writer, but she attains new degrees of intensity here. . . . 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 and love."--Booklist
Synopsis
THE LUMINOUS AND GRIPPING NEW NOVEL FROM “ONE OF OUR BEST WRITERS” (JONATHAN YARDLEY, THE WASHINGTON POST) When Julia Lambert, an art professor, settles into her idyllic Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her fragile relationships with her father, a repressive neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into Alzheimer’s. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julia’s son Jack has spiraled into heroin addiction.
In an attempt to save him, Julia marshals help from her looseknit clan: elderly parents; remarried ex-husband; removed sister; and combative eldest son. Ultimately, heroin courses through the characters’ lives with an impersonal and devastating energy, sweeping the family into a world in which deceit, crime, and fear are part of daily life.
Roxana Robinson is the author of Sweetwater, which Booklist called a “hold-your-breath novel of loss and love.” Billy Collins praised Robinson as “a master at moving from the art of description to the work of excavating the truths about ourselves.”
In Cost, Robinson tackles addiction and explores its effects on the bonds of family, dazzling us with her hallmark subtlety and precision in evoking the emotional interiors of her characters. The result is a work in which the reader’s sense of discovery and compassion for every character remains unflagging to the end, even as the reader, like the characters, is caught up in Cost’s breathtaking pace.
Synopsis
In this luminous and gripping new novel, Robinson tackles addiction and explores its effects on the bonds of family, dazzling readers with her hallmark subtlety and precision in evoking the emotional interiors of her characters.
Synopsis
Julia Lambert, an artist, is spending the summer in her old Maine farmhouse. During a visit from her elderly parents, she hopes to mend complicated relationships with her domineering father, a retired neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into the fog of Alzheimer's. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julia's son, Jack, has spiraled into heroin addiction. In her attempts to save him, Julia marshals help from her loosely knit clan, but Jack's addiction courses through the family with a devastating energy, sweeping them all into a world of confusion, fear, and obsession. In Cost, Roxana Robinson applies her "trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life" and creates a "warmly human and deeply satisfying book, marking a new level of ambition and achievement for this talented author" (Chicago Tribune).
About the Author
Roxana Robinson is the author of three earlier novels and three short-story collections, as well as a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, Best American Short Stories, and Vogue, among other publications. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches at the New School in New York.
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the novels title. What are the many costs—emotional and material— associated with Jacks addiction? What other circumstances lead the characters to consider their self-worth, or the "worth" of others?
2. How does Julias relationship with her sister compare with Stevens relationship with his brother? What leads siblings to become estranged despite having been close during childhood?
3. What does the house in Maine represent to Julia at various points in her life? How does the house set the tone for the novel: picturesque, laden with memories, and in need of repair?
4. What does Cost tell us about the nature of marriage? What enabled Edward and Katharine to sustain their marriage? How does Wendell justify his affair? Is Harriet wise to avoid marriage, pursuing long-term relationships instead?
5. What are the repercussions of the parenting styles presented in the novel? Was Julia harmed by Edwardsjudgmental nature? To what extent was Jacks life a response to the way he perceived his parents?
6. Does Carpenter change Julias family, or are they unaffected by his talk of loving interactions? What is captured in the moment when Edward mentally corrects Carpenter, asserting that addiction is not an illness (chapter twenty-seven)? Does Edward have different standards for the ill? Where does he believe self-determination ends and nature begins?
7. Steven is haunted by his parents infidelity. Why does he blame his mother more easily than his father? How do Julias memories of Eric shape the way she sees herself?
8. What accounts for the difference between Jack and Steven, who uses his rebellion for noble causes (such as protesting against loggers)? Would Steven have been an achiever if his brother had not been so troubled?
9. What portraits of the mind are offered in Cost? How does Edward feel about his memories of being a pioneering surgeon? What remains of Katherine despite her fading memory? What realities doeseach character create in the face of a disorienting world?
10. In chapter thirty-two, Julia tells Jack that he has to try harder. Is Julia naïve or simply afraid of what lies in store for her son? How do the other members of the family respond to both the psychological and the neurological fallout of his addiction? Why is it easier for Julia to acknowledge her parents faltering health, while Harriet wants to believe that they are just fine?
11. What aspects of Julias life emerge during her gallery opening? What is the significance of Harriets presence there?
12. What were you thinking as you read the novels closing scenes? Which characters had changed the most, along with your impressions of them?
13. How would you and your family have responded to a situation like Jacks? What do you believe can or should be done to address the needs of those with such severe addictions?
14. What themes are woven throughout this and other novels and stories by Roxana Robinson? What is unique about the approach she uses in bringing Julias situation to life?