Helpful Score: 4
Having watched a ton of Intervention on A&E, plus having a family member with an addiction problem, I actually didn't enjoy this book. Drawing from my own experience and from what I've seen, I didn't think the dialogue or situations were realistic at all. In fact, they were downright contrived.
I found the main character (the mother) to be insufferable. The mother's elderly parents, including her mother who suffers from Alzheimer's, seemed to be thrown in as an afterthought with perhaps an aim to give them a bigger subplot, but it just didn't work and they ended up being unnecessary and extraneous.
The ending was both predictable and a little abrupt, without a lot of closure.
The whole book just sort of made me mad; I wanted to slap the mother. Didn't do it for me.
I found the main character (the mother) to be insufferable. The mother's elderly parents, including her mother who suffers from Alzheimer's, seemed to be thrown in as an afterthought with perhaps an aim to give them a bigger subplot, but it just didn't work and they ended up being unnecessary and extraneous.
The ending was both predictable and a little abrupt, without a lot of closure.
The whole book just sort of made me mad; I wanted to slap the mother. Didn't do it for me.
Helpful Score: 2
The book was written well, I just didn't like the main character of the book and her actions.
Helpful Score: 2
I thought this was a well-written book -- she touched on many adult child issues -- with the main character being both the adult child of aging parents, and having adult children of her own. The story line of heroin addiction was the vehicle to explore relationships on many levels -- and how they are tested and refined by life events.
This book had a lot of promise for a good family drama. Julia, an art professor, has her aging parents in her Maine summer residence when she gets word that her younger son Jack might have a problem with heroin. However, Roxana Robinson splits the focus between Jack--is he really an addict? how do we get him help?--with deep-seated family tensions. The title 'cost' might not just refer to the physical, economic, or social toll of drugs, but the re-visiting of tensions within this family that includes a domineering patriarch, his wife with the onset of dementia, a remarried ex-husband, a distant sister, and a reluctant older son. Robinson has a tendency to shift from one character's perspective to another suddenly within a chapter but the language is at times beautiful. I don't particularly like the characters as people (but that's not a criterion for rating the book as a whole) or the ending, but it was an engaging read from the list of 1001 books you must read before you die.
