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A Novel
by Roxana Robinson
Book Reviewed by:What risks would you be willing to take to fall in love again?
One of Oprah Daily's Most Anticipated Books of 2024
"I never thought I'd see you here," Sarah says. Then she adds, "But I never thought I'd see you anywhere."
Sarah and Warren's college love story ended in a single moment. Decades later, when a chance meeting brings them together, a passion ignites—threatening the foundations of the lives they've built apart. Since they parted in college, each has married, raised a family, and made a career. When they meet again, Sarah is divorced and living outside New York, while Warren is still married and living in Boston.
Seeing Warren sparks an awakening in Sarah, who feels emotionally alive for the first time in decades. Still, she hesitates to reclaim a chance at love after her painful divorce and years of framing her life around her children and her work. Warren has no such reservations: he wants to leave his marriage but can't predict how his wife and daughter will react. As their affair intensifies, Sarah and Warren must confront the moral responsibilities of their love for their families and each other.
Leaving charts a passage through loyalty and desire as it builds to a shattering conclusion. In her boldest and most powerful work to date, Roxana Robinson demonstrates her "trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life" (Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune) in an engrossing exploration of the vows we make to one another, the tensile relationships between parents and their children, and what we owe to others and ourselves.
Excerpt from Leaving
Page 3-4
"I never thought I'd see you here," Sarah says. Then she adds, "But I never thought I'd see you anywhere."
They're at the opera house, on the second floor, near the head of the grand staircase. He's facing her, leaning his hips against the railing, hands set lightly on either side. Beyond him, in the high open space of the atrium, hang the glittering crystal chandeliers, frozen starbursts. Below, people move up and down the broad red-carpeted staircase, hurrying but stately. They are mostly over fifty, this is the second intermission, and there is only so much time left to meet someone, eat something, drink something, void, before the caped ushers begin playing their little xylophones, the bright tuneless melodies announcing the last act.
She had known him at once. His younger face is still visible within this older one, though this one is creased now, hollowed here, fuller there. The same square shape, same bright brown eyes and wide brow. The same thick ...
Several decades after the abrupt end of an intense affair in young adulthood, a chance encounter re-ignites the connection between a married man and a long-divorced woman (Teresa R). Difficult questions come into play in this masterfully written story: What exactly is honor and where is the boundary for morality? What binds us to our marital oaths, our partners, our children? What do we owe ourselves? (Susan P). Robinson's ability to draw the reader into the lives of her protagonists is achieved through pitch-perfect dialogue and exquisite description (Molly O). The author gives the story a sensuous finesse; she vividly describes the notorious baggage that can come with obtaining your heart's desires and does it without dropping into cliche (Betsey V)...continued
Full Review
(832 words)
(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).
Amy Bloom, author of In Love
Leaving is a passionate portrait of marriages, of parenthood (early and late), and the tectonic shifts of family life. Roxana Robinson brings her wit, her beautiful sentences, and her compassionate clarity to this book about the price of love and the enduring need for it. Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse
What does love demand of us, and who must pay the price? Leaving is a searing interrogation of honor and passion. It dissects the hidden cost of the choices we make, and the consequences with which we must endeavor to live. Gish Jen, author of The Resisters
If to the combustible elements of passion, honor, love, and art, you add the complexities of modern parenting, you get the conflagration that is Leaving. Compelling, heart-stopping, and all too believable, this is a marvelous read.
Roxana Robinson's novel Leaving begins with the protagonists meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House during a production of Tosca. This opera is a tragedy, set in Rome in 1800, during the Napoleonic Wars.
The drama centers around three main characters: Mario Cavaradossi, a painter and Napoleon supporter; Baron Vitellio Scarpia, the corrupt head of police; and Floria Tosca, a beautiful opera singer. Tosca and Cavaradossi are lovers but the lascivious Scarpia wants to add Tosca to his long list of conquests. He arrests Cavaradossi on suspicion of hiding an escaped political prisoner and has him tortured in Tosca's hearing, ultimately sentencing him to death. Tosca pleads for Cavaradossi's life, which Scarpia pretends he'll grant in ...
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