Leaving: A Novel

“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 their lives. 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 fears 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. 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, “Leaving is a tour de force—unfailingly clear-eyed, and its final impact shatters." (Washington Post)

About the Author :
Roxana Robinson is the award-winning author of seven novels, three short story collections, and a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City and Connecticut.

Review :
"Poised to fuel many a book group discussion.… [A]n operatic tragedy about passion and honor." "An impassioned portrayal of desire and loyalty, of romantic love and family duty, and an exploration into what we owe to each other—and to ourselves." "[A] quietly compelling novel of forbidden love.… The book captures the aching pull of an all-consuming affair [and] shows how desire can still have painful consequences." "As it navigates the chasm between responsibility and desire, this beautiful book will sweep you away." "Can lovers still be ‘star-crossed,’ doomed from the start to labor under a ‘malign star’? They can, says Roxana Robinson, in her elegant love story Leaving.… Robinson’s storytelling is classic, page after page of swiftly moving scenes.… [T]he ending is a bombshell, eminently discussable." "Leaving is full of insights about the ambiguities, demands, and mysteries attached to passion, love, and commitment." "With searing perception and genuine empathy, Robinson captures the fraught nuances of complicated family dynamics, treating the spurned-lover trope with gentleness and compassion." "Leaving is as absorbing as it is haunting, powered by Roxana Robinson’s deep understanding of ambiguities, allegiances, and the lengths people must sometimes go to navigate them." "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." "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." "A remarkable novel—a quietly expansive story, in which elements of love and family coalesce and escalate into tragedy. Leaving has a plot in which surprises abound, as broken conventions lead to menace and threat. A triumph of a book." "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."