COST
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"Cost is...an account of a perfect human storm that leaves a terrible wake. It's also impossible to put down, its bleakness relieved by Robinson's elegant, restrained prose and breakneck pacing. This is simply one of the most heart-wrenching and powerful novels I have ever read."
Down East Magazine
"'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, June 22.
A Spring 2008 "Recommended Reads" choice of the National Book Critics Circle.
Roxana Robinson is the author of the three earlier novels 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 and other publications. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, House and Garden, Fine Gardening, Travel and Leisure, 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 a Trustee emeritus of American PEN, and the National Humanities Center. She is on the Council of The Authors' Guild and the board of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and The Nature Conservancy of Eastern New York. She has taught at the University of Houston and at Wesleyan University. She teaches at The New School for Social Research in New York City.
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.”