Roxana RobinsonReseñas

This book haunts me. Robinson raises questions of morality, loyalty, betrayal and what we owe to others and to ourselves. She offers no answers. My parents (now deceased) divorced after over 50 years of marriage when my mother left my father for another man so this book may resonate more powerfully with me.

Seems so simple: former lovers bump into each other at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC; they're in their 60s; she's divorced and a widow, he's married. Their relationship began in high school but she broke up with him in the college days, for fear of his unreliability, and marries a man who defines that word. He married when it was time, choosing a woman who was pretty and funny and sadly shallow. Two poor matches. Now can Sarah and Warren make up for forty lost years? Family disasters intervene in the form of a recalcitrant, unforgiving, headstrong daughter, and another daughter almost dies in childbirth. Choices and forces drive them apart. This is a heartbreaker and a heart-revealer, touching, warm, smart, and beautifully written, with the most believable and sympathetic characters imaginable. Robinson, consistently thoughtful, has never written a false word.

This novel, an insightful and powerful examination of a conflict between honour and passion, asks what we owe both others and ourselves.

Forty years after their breakup in college, a chance meeting brings together Warren Jennings and Sarah Watson. Sarah, a museum curator, is a mother and grandmother who has been divorced for almost two decades. Warren, a successful architect, has been married to Janet for 34 years, and they have one daughter, 24-year-old Katrina. The two rekindle their relationship even though Sarah lives near New York and Warren lives in Boston. Warren admits to not being completely happy in his marriage; though Janet “has given him everything she has. It’s not enough.” When he tells her he wants a divorce, Janet resists and then Katrina threatens to totally cut him out of her life. Both Warren and Sarah must decide what they are willing and not willing to leave behind for true love.

The book raises so many questions. Is it morally acceptable to leave a marriage in order to pursue personal happiness or should personal happiness be sacrificed for the greater good, to protect “family, order, duty, honor”? What responsibilities does a parent have for grown children who are living independently? How does a parent maintain a connection with grown children? Should adult children have the power to emotionally control their parents? What do we owe ourselves and others when our choices have consequences, both for ourselves and others?

Point of view is particularly effective. The reader is given both Sarah and Warren’s perspectives. Because we are given their thoughts and feelings, we get to know them intimately. We experience their joys and sorrows and understand their motivations. We might not agree with their decisions, but we can follow their thought processes.

My feelings about the characters did not remain static. This speaks to the complexity of the characters: good but flawed people. Warren, for instance, had my sympathy as he sees his future as a life sentence of “the torture of false intimacy” or life without his daughter, yet I also felt anger because he sometimes seems so weak in his encounters with Katrina. His choice at the end, not removing his backpack, tells a lot about his character. I wanted to shout at the young Sarah for being so quick to jump to conclusions about Warren. Why didn’t she speak to him openly about her concerns? But of course “She’d known nothing about choosing a husband.” At times she tries to minimize her role in breaking up Warren’s marriage. On the other hand, her efforts to connect to Meg and Jeff are so sincere. The one person whom I consistently did not like is Katrina who just seems selfish, emotionally immature, manipulative, and implacably judgmental.

The ending is perfect. Given the discussions of operas and tragedies, it is predictable, but given what has gone before and Warren’s character, it is entirely appropriate. I would love a sequel focusing on the three women and their thoughts/reactions to Warren’s choice at the end. Would they question what happened and re-evaluate their actions? Would Sarah, if she suspected what happened, see Warren’s action as breaking the social contract “to see this through to the end”?

I highly recommend this book which has so much depth. It is so well-written: I loved the allusions to literature, art and the opera which work so well in developing theme. It is such an honest and authentic portrayal of marriage and family relationships. The novel would be an excellent choice for book clubs because it is so thought-provoking. Readers will certainly have strong feelings about who behaved honourably and who let passion rule and broke moral codes.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/DCYakabuski).½

"Her parents were drifting away, locked in a losing struggle with their bodies, their minds. The tide was going out."

Julia, a divorced art professor, is spending the summer at her Maine house when it becomes apparent that her younger son Jack has descended into the hell of heroin addiction. The novel follows Julia and her family's journey as they attempt to rescue Jack. The story, told from alternating points of view of the various family members, including Julia's parents, her father a cold and controlling retired neurosurgeon, her mother in the beginnings of Alzheimers, her ex-husband, Jack's older brother, and Jack himself, is a devastating one. It is not easy to read, and people more knowledgeable than me state that it paints an accurate description of the dirty side of an addict's life and what it is like to go through withdrawal an rehab, and of course how rarely rehab is successful. The focus is not entirely on the addict, however, but how addiction affects, and sometimes destroys, the entire family.

This is an excellent book. "Enjoyable" is not the word, but it is a book definitely well-worth reading. My only complaint is that Julia at times seemed too naive, too willing to accept Jack's lies and deceptions, and she took entirely too long to accept the reality of Jack's addiction. But, I suppose that's what a mother's love would do.

4 stars

Frank Dawson leaves all he knows in England to come to the United States to join the Confederacy in their fight against the Union in the Civil War. He becomes well known and mostly well liked in his community of Charleston, South Carolina. He becomes the editor of the Charleston News and Courier and his opinion is valued as the South tries to grow again after the ravages of the war.

It was a very difficult time in the country’s history as the South was dealing with the destruction the war wrought, the emancipation of the slaves which left them without their “free” labor source and the impact of various political forces on moving forward. Frank uses his platform to promote his liberal views which are, for the most part well received. He grows his family and all seems to be going well.

Then another paper opens with opposing views, more conservative views particularly when it comes to the freed slaves. Dawson finds his paper is losing subscribers and his business starts to wobble. He also finds himself embroiled in a feud with a neighbor. That neighbor, a doctor seems to have developed an obsession with the Dawson family nanny.

Ms. Robinson created the story from family diaries and historical records. It is a fascinating look at a tumultuous time in this country’s history. It does start a little slowly but it picks up and I found that I couldn’t put it down. Dawson is a rich and complicated man; his story is just one of the many immigrant tales that have built this country into what it is today. Each little piece in each little town and city has brought us to today.½

Dawson's Fall is a novel based on the lives of the author's great-grandparents in Charleston, SC in 1889. She used family papers, journals, letters and newspaper articles for the basis of the novel but also did extensive research about America during the years after the Civil War.

The war between the states is over but its effects were still felt in Charleston. Frank Dawson survived the war and is now the editor of the Charleston News and Courier. He appears to be living comfortably with his wife Sarah and their two children but is having several financial problems that he hasn't shared with his wife. As Frank continues to write editorials about equal rights and nonviolence, his newspaper readership is dropping rapidly because these are not the views of most of the people in Charleston who were against Black people owning property and voting.

This was an interesting look at the views of people after the Civil War. I thought that it was well written and appreciated that the author used the journal entries and letters of her family to tell the story. I do agree with many reviewers that the first half of the story was difficult to get through because of all the characters. However, I encourage you to read this book for the story that's told in the second half. It is an excellent look at the conflicting views about race after the Civil War.

Conrad Farrell returns from a tour of duty in Afghanistan and is no longer a Marine but finds life as a civilian difficult to live. The Conrad who joined the Marines is not the same person who returned. 375 pages of his angst, not being able to concentrate on tests, unable to behave "normally", unable to have personal relationships with family members/girlfriend. Finally decides to commit suicide - but younger brother talks him out of it. He gets better in the final TWO PAGES. Aargh!

Georgia O’Keefle's life spanned nearly a century of ferment and change in America. Her childhood was spent on a midwestem farm in a pioneer community in the 1890s. As a young painter, she lived in New York City at the centre of the avant-garde during a time of turbulence and transformation following World War 1. After her relationship with Alfred Stieglitz began and as her own achievement grew, she divided her time between the city, the countryside at Lake George, New York, and her explorations of the vast spaces of the West. After Stieglitz’s death she returned to a settled rural existence in New Mexico where she spent the rest of her life.
As an artist, she came of age with American modernism. Though part of that movement, she established her own vision and remained in the forefront of American art through much of her life. She was the first artist to record the female sensibility without apology in a style both strong and candid. She was deeply influenced by feminist thought, having experienced the early suffrage movement before World War 1. During the next wave of feminism in the 1970s, she was hailed as a heroine.
Her life was rich in intense relationships—With family and friends; Stieglitz with whom she had a long, intimate and difficult marriage; and, later, a much younger companion, ]uan Hamilton.
Georgia O’Keeffe lived with courage, passion and integrity. Her life was governed by the rigorous demands of love and work, and the struggle between them resulted in extraordinary accomplishment.
(front jacket)
This richly detailed and moving biography is the first to draw upon the many sources closed to writers during O’Keeffe’s lifetime, and the first to have the cooperation of the O’Keeffe family. To her wonderful portrait of this remarkable woman, Roxana Robinson has also brought her talents as a novelist and art historian.
Roxana Barry Robinson is a scholar of American painting and has written about Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove and other members of the Stieglitz circle. She is the author of Summer Light, a novel, as well as short fiction that has appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines.
(back jacket)

Robinson writes of love in the lives of upper class, east coast, WASPs. In these stories she writes of marriage, divorce, remarriage, and how the children are affected. Her prose is lucid and unornamented; the stories are told with no unnecessary words. Not being of the group of people she writes about, I can’t say if she depicts them perfectly or not, but they seem realistic and lifelike- love, after all, probably works the same no matter what social class you are, even if your other concerns are different. For some reason I, who am not the biggest fan of short stories, really liked these. Just something about how Robinson writes. Not “my favorite book of all time”, but I enjoyed them a great deal.

"This Is My Daughter" could be called a novel in a kind of American classic style that's not much in favor these days: it's well written, long on descriptions -- of both settings and characters' emotional states, and concerns WASPy types with lots of blueblood prestige and eighties-era money who live in the Northeast. The book carefully tracks the the subtle emotional stresses that what used to called a "blended family" undergoes during the processes of divorce and remarriage, centering on the two daughters involved, Amanda and Tess. There's nothing groundbreaking here, perhaps, but Robinson proves herself to be an acute observer of human emotion and, in particular, of emotional discomfort: while the book's surfaces are lush and comfortable, few people in it are ever really happy or at ease. It also describes an interesting time in which divorce was legal but, in some high-flown social circles, not quite accepted: many of the characters here are stumbling around in unknown, potentially dangerous territory that their distinguished ancestors would never have had to negotiate.

To be honest, I found reading this one a bit taxing at times, and perhaps wishing that the book wasn't quite as focused on the characters' interiors, and, finally, that it wasn't quite so long. But this approach does help the author render each of her characters with remarkable precision, which can itself be involving. As the reviewer below me noted, the book is absorbing in its own way, and it flows well for a book that's such a serious character study: Robinson moves easily and naturally from one character's meditation to another's. She's also careful to make any of these characters into a one-dimensional villain or hero: in family life, she seems to be saying, everyone hurts someone, and everyone gets hurt. In this, misunderstandings are shown to be both terribly damaging, though perhaps inevitable. "This Is My Daughter" is not exactly my style, but even so, it's recommended to those who value literary craft, those who have lots of patience with the slow dynamics of family disintegration and reintegration, and those to whom the very term "beach read" is odious.

I would like to push this to 3.5 stars. Very good novel about the effects of addiction on a family with an unexpected ending. I find myself more coolly respctful of the book than emotional but still.

It's the normalcy of the family and the way the cracks are all there, ready to break apart, that make the novel as good as it is.

It's a 3.5 for it's very realistic look at addiction, specifically heroin addiction and what it can do to a family. I thought it got off track some of the time by trying to bring in too many other problems to the family dynamic.

It's a 3.5 for it's very realistic look at addiction, specifically heroin addiction and what it can do to a family. I thought it got off track some of the time by trying to bring in too many other problems to the family dynamic.

Roxana Robinson's SPARTA is gut-wrenching, heartbreaking literary fiction that kept me reading late into the night, And as I got closer and closer to the book's end, I began to dread what would come, was actually afraid for this young man, protagonist Conrad Farrell, and what he might do. Because he had become that real to me. Not a fictional character, but a real-life, flesh and blood human being, and one who was in deep trouble, tortured by unbearable "storms of anguish and grief and despair ... of guilt and shame."

With Marine Corps LT Conrad Farrell, a returning Iraq War veteran, Roxana Robinson has created a character who, while real enough as an individual - and vividly so - could also be construed as a composite of thousands of veterans irreparably damaged by the war. And so many of them, like Farrell, fail to seek help because they are still governed by the "suck it up" and "be a man" mindset drilled into them by their training.

Farrell comes from a comfortably upper-class background in Westchester County, and is a graduate of Williams College, where he studied the classics. His father is a professor, his mother a licensed social worker and therapist. It seems an unlikely background for a Marine officer, in this era of no draft and a professional military which comprises barely one percent of the population. But Conrad was drawn by that age old pull of wanting to test himself, and there was also some idealism, wanting to do something for his country. The Iraq War was not yet a reality when he signed up, but came soon after, and his long nightmare of combat, casualties, and his subsequent return to an uncaring general populace is documented here in a narrative so compelling and real that it will not just draw you in; it will break your heart.

It doesn't take Conrad long, upon his return home, to realize that he doesn't fit in, not with his loving family, not with his girl friend. Not anywhere. A veteran of numerous firefights and victim of IEDs, he is plagued by crippling headaches, bloody memories and horrifying flashbacks, and forced to admit, "The stuff in my head is permanent. It can't be erased." And only when thoughts of suicide become more frequent does he seek help, through an overburdened and indifferent VA Hospital system.

Robinson compares the rigid warrior codes and training of Sparta, the ancient Greek city-state, to those of the Marine Corps, and tells us -

"Sparta failed, in the end, because the energies of the state were directed only toward war ... The costs of war were great, both to the nation and to the soldiers. Sparta made young boys into warriors; it was left to the warriors to restore themselves to men."

Conrad Farrell's story is grim proof of the difficulty of effecting such a restoration.

Roxana Robinson's previous novel, which I have not read, is called COST. She could have easily used the same title for this book, with its heart wrenching descriptions of the human cost of our current wars. Robinson is a marvelous writer, and SPARTA is a book which cries out to be read. My highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA

Extraordinary novel. Robinson gets written off as a family writer, someone with concerns over the emotional dynamics in family and yet isn't that the core. This novel about heroin addiction was a kind of thriller. I was so freaked out by what was happening I was turning the pages as fast as I could. So much was at stake and yet unlike a thriller where all the leads move you away from the realistic center, this led you back to the family with all it's unresolved conflicts. A third person mobile narrator capable to impersonating multiple characters in a scene, it is the low key story teller who is exceptionally gifted but never takes credit for it. By the end you realize that Robinson found a way to lay the heart open even while touching on all this loss. She has been called one of our greatest writers and this was a tour de force. Wow!

rabck from rubyrebel; absolutely no idea why this was on my wishlist, but the stories were wonderful. I could only read one at a time, then take a break to savor and ponder them. The writer talks about writing short stories at the end of the book, and she does a good job with them. Writing them very tightly, but leaving you dangling and wondering at the end. I particularly liked Blind Man - could the father have really done anything? Or intersection - which portrays being out of control in your life, or are you? This one will be on it's way to Australia!½

Brilliantly told, heartbreaking without being hopeless...enlightening if you know someone fighting this same PTSD fight.

Inspired by the romanticized accounts of war in the ancient world, classics major Conrad Farrell joins the Marines in an attempt to enter into the venerable brotherhood of honor, sacrifice, and courage forged in the heat of combat. Explaining his decision to enlist, Conrad naively tells his parents, "The classical writers love war, that's their main subject. Being a soldier was the whole deal, the central experience . . . It seems like it's the great thing. The great challenge" (22). And so Conrad goes to Sparta--the nickname for the Marine military base in Haditha, Iraq. However, he also goes to Sparta in the figurative sense, learning that what gave greatness to the ancient Greek city-state famous for its military might was also the chink in its armor: when you surrender everything to war, you lose something intrinsic and necessary for the survival of the human spirit.

Sparta is not about Conrad's time in Iraq, although there are several well-written flashback sequences that give us insight into what Conrad endured as a soldier. Instead, it is a powerful novel focusing on what happens when a warrior returns home. What is his place when his service is done, when the mission is complete, and when what he found in war was not glory or purpose or righteousness, but waste and hypocrisy? Roxana Robinson does a superb job of delineating Conrad's slow descent into existential darkness, finding it increasingly impossible to reconnect to an America and a family so materially comfortable and willfully insular that it knows nothing of what his time in Iraq was like. As he tells his father, "It's hard to describe. It's like I can't get in here. It's as though I'm standing outside. I can see everyone in here, rushing around and doing things, and I can't get in" (240).

Conrad's training as a Marine defines him, leading to a single-minded determination to fight against the anxiety, the fear, and the rage on his own; to seek outside help would be a sign of weakness and failure. He begins to see himself as a man divided: there is the Conrad who existed before the war, the one everyone expects him to be, and the soldier who is so defined by combat that he cannot exist in a world without it. As it becomes more evident that he is losing the battle within himself, Conrad's plight is made all the more distressing when he begins to seek help from a disinterested and unforgivably slow VA. While I know that many VA clinics are run by compassionate, engaged medical professionals, it is just as true that many are indifferent or ill-equipped to handle the task of treating our veterans. That any man or woman who has been willing to sacrifice for our nation should have to wait months for needed medical treatment or tolerate a slow-moving bureaucracy is a shameful condemnation of our society's refusal to respect and honor the human cost of war.

Robinson's creation of a soldier's struggle is certainly admirable and, for the most part, surprisingly convincing given that it's written by a female author outside of the military. Her real strength lies in depicting the complexity of the relationships: the silent agony of his family, the confusion of his girlfriend, the awkward interactions with former friends, and the painful communications with his fellow Marines (many of whom are also struggling, but valiantly trying to hide it from their former lieutenant). In particular, the sibling bond between Conrad and his younger brother and sister (a bond forged of shared experience and damaged by Conrad's isolated time outside of that bond) struck me as genuine and authentic. Robinson is certainly to be commended for the beauty of the writing, as well as the light she sheds on the emotional toll of war. Despite this, it does sometimes feel a bit too studied, too researched; it doesn't (brace yourselves for what you should have known would be the inevitable Tim O'Brien comparison) make me feel the effects in the way that The Things They Carried does. And while Robinson is an impressive chronicler of the minutiae of daily life--the ever changing earrings worn by Conrad's sister, the flotsam and jetsam that inevitably end up on the kitchen refrigerator, the festive decor of a Christmas table--such details strike me as decidedly feminine; granted, Conrad's training has taught him to home in on details, but these still seem like the things that make up the lives of women and might be briefly noted and then discarded as irrelevant by a masculine mind.

A brief history lesson on the Iraq War and on military life in Sparta are awkwardly shoe-horned into the narrative in the beginning, but once Sparta finds its focus in the mind of Conrad, it is a powerful and necessary reminder that not every soldier who comes home without injury is, in fact, whole.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder and at Shelf Inflicted

One of the most well researched books on the life of Georgia O'Keeffe. It was instructive as a text on the people she knew, her interactions with them as well as a well written general biography. The author dealt with conflicts frankly and laid out her cases succinctly. She leaves the reader with the idea that O'Keeffe was a loner who proved that women could be successful in the 20th century, especially as an artist. I think that I'll read another book to get another perspective, though.

I had the library specially order this for me -as they could not get it from inter library loan they actually purchased it. I feel slightly guilty inflicting it on other people when I return it to the library.

It is pretty much a classic what-seems-like-it-will-tear-the-family-apart-actually- brings-it-closer story. It could have been a powerful story about addiction and how an entire family becomes caught in it's vortex. But somehow it wasn't. Partially it is because it takes place against a background of distressed barnwood. I understand this is to show that heroin addiction does not only occur among the working classes, that it can happen to any family, but somehow it falls a bit flat in its middle-class earnestness.

Part of the problem is the over use of descriptive language- we know what every character was wearing in every scene, and the decor of every room, particularly in the 'shabby-chic' Maine summer home. The over use of adjectives ans similes is a pet hate of mine, and I knew trouble was ahead when every ingredient in a ham sandwich in the opening chapter is described, from the 'translucent, succulent meat' to the tomato with its 'juicy scarlet core' to the slices of bread spread with mayonnaise like 'marble tiles'.

Well written book about a returning Iraq veteran. Author gets inside his head and makes it believable. I really cared about what would happen to this guy.

This one BLEW. ME. AWAY. I did not want to read another book about the Iraq war. I did not want to read anything else grim, dark, or depressing but I couldn't put it down.

I can't begin to get my thoughts ordered enough to write this one the review it deserves, but I can sing its praises to the heavens. Have no doubt-- this is a meaty book, with a subject matter that many of us find distasteful, but it is an exquisite piece of writing...no extra words, no fluff, but bold, brazen, heart-wrenching; it's a panic attack-producing introspective look at what is happening to an entire generation of this country's (and maybe the world's?) young military aged people who have gone off to serve their country with high hopes of changing the world, only to return to a world they don't know, don't understand, and a world that doesn't seem able to understand them or help them cope with the traumas they've endured. They may come home in pieces physically, or they may return looking intact, but they are all fractured indelibly from what they've done, what they've endured, what they've seen and heard and smelt and experienced.

The story is about Conrad Farrell - New England upper middle class classics major in college, enamored of the ancient Spartans and the purity of their thoughts, who decides after graduation to do "something real.. something that will make a difference" by accepting a commission in the US Marines. As a Marine leader, he is responsible for his men, and goes off to Iraq to watch and engage in the carnage that was Fallujah and surrounding area battles. When he returns after four years, he is irrevocably changed and unable to settle back into a world he no longer recognizes.
"You don't get it. I'd love to do this....Change. I can't. Something's not working. All you do is tear me apart. I'd like to be back here with you all, but I'm not. You don't get it. I'm not here. I'm not home. I'm still there." p. 348

His family (parents, brother, sister and girl-friend) are devastated when their efforts to understand are scorned, all offers of help are ignored or rejected, when they see him sinking further and deeper into non-functioning desperation and are forced to stand by helplessly. His inability to articulate his problems compounds the tragedy. The VA is not much help. (The book is set in 2006). His mother, a professional therapist, is particularly upset:

"I know what I'm supposed to do....I do it all the time as a therapist...but I can't do it with Con. I can't do it.....I'm not supposed to reach out to him. He doesn't like it. I can see that. If he were a client, I'd tell myself to stop....I'm too afraid. I can't leave him alone....What kind of a therapist! What kind of a mother! I can't stop." p. 340

It should be required reading in high school, in college, at our military's officer training academies and War Colleges, and by all who are in the unenviable position of treating these returning veterans both physically and mentally. Ultimately, it's not only an indictment of our mental health care system, but of our national caring system, our national conscience, and the conflicted values of leadership theory.

Ultimately it's also a book about hope, and love and caring, and never giving up.

Definitely going to be on my top 5 of the year list. GO GET IT. GO READ IT.

As I work with vets this was an extremely realistic presentation especially in 2006. We at the VA have become much more aware of the multiple issues. We are hoping that by treating the vets early we can impact their lives.½

This book was wonderful. This subject needs to be discussed more openly and the author provided a story that was extremely realistic. I recommend that everyone read this book. I especially think it would be important to high school students to read this book as they may have friends or older relatives going through this same issue.

The characters in the book are all very wooden, stereotypical and unlikeable. As an example older parents who don't know what is going on and can't cope with change or retirement. Daughter who wonders whether to put them in a home until she has a problem with her son -- a heroin addict who lies and steals from her. Daughter who doesn't want to take things from her father except that she had a priviledged life and education and is now an art professor at Columbia. There is no one to care about here and I don't understand all the praise this novel received.