COST
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Long-listed for the 2010 Dublin Impac Award
One of Five Best Fiction Books of the Year - Washington Post
Best Books of the Year - Library Journal
One of the Best Books of the Year - Seattle Times
Twelve Best Books of the Year - Wall Street Journal
"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... 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
"'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, June 22.
Winner of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance 2009 Award for Fiction
Roxana Robinson is the author of the four novels Cost, (2008) Sweetwater, (2003) This Is My Daughter, (1998) and Summer Light (1988); the three short story collections A Perfect Stranger, (2005) Asking for Love, (1996) A Glimpse of Scarlet, (1991) and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, (1989). Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. She has received fellowships from the NEA, the MacDowell Colony, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Daedalus, Best American Stories, The American Scholar, and other publications. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, The Wilson Quarterly, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. She divides her time between New York and Maine, and writes frequently on the natural world and the environment.
She is an officer of the board at PEN, and has served on the board of the National Humanities Center and the The Nature Conservancy of Eastern New York. She is on the Council of The Authors' Guild and the board of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. Robinson has taught at the University of Houston, Wesleyan University and the New School.
Her fiction has been compared to that of John Cheever, by The New York Times, and that of Edith Wharton, by Newsweek; Jonathan Yardley, of the Washington Post, says “Robinson is one of our best writers.”