 With "Cost", Robinson moved into a larger arena, and, as critic Ron Charles of the "Washington Post" has said, she "has crept into corners of human experience [that] each of us is terrified to approach ... the implacable tragedies that shred our sense of how the world should work".In a "New York Times" interview on the extensive research she did, Robinson said, “'Cost' has a larger reach than my previous books, both in terms of emotional risk and experience.Alzheimer's and heroin addiction are things I found both very threatening and compelling.