false 47783 3 2 ]]> female Kentucky 2939754 0374271879 9780374271879 106 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2939754.Cost_A_Novel 3.54 308
In an attempt to save him, Julia marshals help from her loose-knit 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.

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.]]> 47783 3.57 574 168 2008 862529 0747507570 9780747507574 15 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178992553m/862529.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178992553s/862529.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/862529.Georgia_O_Keefe_A_Life 4.01 79 47783 3.57 574 168 1989 83570 0812967348 9780812967340 15 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171046369m/83570.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171046369s/83570.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83570.Sweetwater_A_Novel 3.14 51 Sweetwater she transcends the particulars of the domestic sphere with a broader, more encompassing vision. In this poignant account of a young widow and her second marriage, Robinson expands her scope to include the larger natural world as well as the smaller, more intimate one of the home.

Isabel Green’s marriage to Paul Simmons, after the death of her first husband, marks her reconnection to life—a venture she’s determined will succeed. But this proves to be harder than she’d anticipated, and the challenges of starting afresh seem more complicated in adulthood. Staying at the Simmons lodge for their annual summer visit, Isabel finds herself entering into a set of familial complexities. She struggles to understand her new husband, his elderly, difficult parents and his brother, whose relationship with Paul seems oddly fraught. Furthermore, her second marriage begins to cast into sharp relief the troubling echoes of her first. Isabel’s professional life plays a part as well: a passionate environmental advocate, she is aware of the tensions within the mountain landscape itself during a summer of spectacular beauty and ominous drought.

In her cool, elegant prose, Robinson gracefully delivers a plot that is complex, surprising and ultimately wrenching in its impact. As the strands of family are woven tightly and inevitably together, and as the past painfully informs the present, the vivid backdrop of the physical world provides its own eloquent dynamic. Sweetwater is a stunning achievement by a writer at the peak of her craft.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 47783 3.57 574 168 2003 165182 0684864363 9780684864365 11 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172340339m/165182.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172340339s/165182.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/165182.This_is_My_Daughter_A_Novel 3.25 44 When Peter and Emma, both refugees from failed first marriages, decide to create a new life together, they do so with an optimistic commitment to creating a union -- and forging a new family from two existing ones -- bonded by love and trust. Their young daughters, however, are not partners in this new venture, but helpless participants. Like all children of divorce, the girls feel sorrow, loss, and a longing for their earlier lives. As the tensions and complexities grow steadily more powerful, This Is My Daughter moves inexorably to a stunning and emotional climax. Roxana Robinson, who has established a reputation as a perceptive chronicler of WASP family life, delivers a beautifully moving and compassionate account of a marriage in peril, proving once more that class and privilege provide no protection from the passion of opposing desires.

]]> 47783 3.57 574 168 1998 165177 0812967356 9780812967357 6 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172340338m/165177.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172340338s/165177.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/165177.A_Perfect_Stranger_And_Other_Stories 3.74 23 47783 3.57 574 168 2005 1422339 0747525501 9780747525509 3 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1183473506m/1422339.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1183473506s/1422339.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1422339.SUMMER_LIGHT 2.92 13
With trademark intensity and a deft touch for character and place, Robinson creates a perceptive, believable, and gently humorous portrait of an individual "waiting for something that would set her life in order." Laura is as much a study of light and shadow as the photographs she takes. Beautiful but insecure, talented but unwilling to take risks, loved but unable to make a commitment, she is paralyzed by fear and locked into a stasis that Ward is no longer willing to accept. "You don't dare take a stand on anything," he tells her. "You're so terrified of failure you don't dare do anything." When her estranged husband arrives for a weekend visit, however, the emotional collision rocks Laura's inaction, causing a tiny shake of the kaleidoscope that creates a vastly different pattern. The image is razor sharp at last: "As though she were changing lenses, as though she had suddenly discovered another light source," she sees that her life is her own. That new understanding empowers her to make a symbolic -- and a literal -- leap of faith that saves her own life and the lives of those she loves.]]> 47783 3.57 574 168 1991 477407 0747531609 9780747531609 2 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175095183m/477407.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175095183s/477407.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477407.Asking_for_Love 3.57 7 47783 3.57 574 168 1996 477406 0060981164 9780060981167 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175095183m/477406.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175095183s/477406.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477406.A_Glimpse_of_Scarlet_And_Other_Stories 4.75 4 47783 3.57 574 168 1991 3207880 9051083459 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3207880.Stiefkind 3.00 1 47783 3.57 574 168 1998 7303263 0307431886 9780307431882 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7303263-sweetwater 0.0 0 47783 3.57 574 168 2007