-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
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.
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).
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 ...
If you liked Leaving, try these:
by Ann Patchett
Published 2025
In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America's finest writers.
by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Published 2020
A finely observed, timely exploration of marriage, divorce, and the bewildering dynamics of ambition from one of the most exciting writers working today.
Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
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.
