By Heidi Simmons
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The Cost of Living
By Rob Roberge
Fiction
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Good or bad, there is a toll for taking up space on this planet. Although we are responsible for our actions, there is always someone or something that impacts our very existence. In Rob Roberge’s novel The Cost of Living, (Other Voices, 291 pages) he takes us on a journey where his characters pay a high price for their addiction, mental illness and dysfunctional relationships.
Bud Barrett is a junkie. He’s been kicked out of his indie-alt-country rock band, his beautiful, intelligent and working wife has given up on him, and he’s desperate to stay on the wagon. But it is not as simple as completing the twelve steps. Bud cannot function without knowing the details of his fucked up childhood. He wants answers to why his mother took her life, why his father killed a man in front of him, and ultimately, to understand why he was born so unlovable. Bud’s journey to get to the truth is painful, humiliating, and deadly. It’s also, at times, very humorous.
If you’ve read my column over the last year, you know I’m fond of flawed, marginalized and borderline characters in literature. I find those who live on the fringe and struggle to maintain a life in the world of “normal” people fascinating. Bud is not a horrible person. He’s not stupid or repulsive — that is unless he’s doing drugs, which is all but five years and six months of his story. He is sympathetic but we don’t ever really know him sober and healthy. He is bipolar and “uses” for self-medication and self-destruction.
Told in first person, the story is reflective and introspective. Bud explicitly shares the pleasures and horrors of drug abuse and life on the road with his band. It is never glamorous. When his world of sex, drugs and rock and roll ends, Bud eventually comes to the decision that the next time he uses: “I’m making that final choice between being one of the living and one of the dead. I don’t have another detox and rehab left in me.”
Roberge is a CV resident. The Cost of Living is his fourth book. He is a compelling author who pulls the reader into the lives and heads of characters who exist on the edge, barely hanging on, and yet are amazingly resilient considering the damage they do to themselves and others. For these characters, one bad choice can suck them into something shady, dangerous or out of control.
In his other books, Working Backwards From The Worst Moment of My Life, a collection of short stories (Red Hen Press); Drive (Hollyridge Press); More Than They Could Chew (Perennial Dark Alley), there are similar characters with similar challenges. Roberge brilliantly shows the grittier side of life beyond the wrong side of the tracks. Some bits and pieces of his earlier material are incorporated into The Cost of Living.
This is Roberge’s best work. The story unfolds in a nonlinear way that keeps the reader intrigued, involved and uncomfortable. We are witness to Bud’s gnarly journey and his uncertain future. There are moments that are intensely witty, raunchy and touching. It is Bud’s story, but whether Bud is aware of it or not, the reader understands the devastating impact his addiction has on the people and relationships in his life.
Although I believed there was going to be a stronger ending involving his mother’s death, Roberge stays true to solving the ultimate mystery for Bud — did his mother and father ever love him?
Like Charles Burkowski and Raymond Carver, there is a sense Roberge is speaking with personal authority from his own intimate experience when it comes to addiction and self-loathing. He plays guitar and sings in an LA punk band called The Urinals. As entertaining as it is, it’s a story that rings sadly true. Who among us goes through life without paying a price? And ultimately, what is the cost of living but life itself.
