Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Leaving by Roxana Robinson - Available

Leaving

A Novel

by Roxana Robinson
Hannah Choi
Audiobook
1 of 2 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 2 copies available
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 6, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781696614177
      • File size: 346097 KB
      • Duration: 12:01:02

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 13, 2023
      Robinson (Sparta) once again examines the moral behavior of family members and lovers in her adroit if schematic latest. Decades have passed since Sarah, a late-middle-aged divorced museum curator, last saw her college sweetheart Warren. They meet again at an opera in New York City and, though Warren is married now, they begin an affair, acknowledging what a mistake it was to have parted all those years ago. When Warren leaves his wife, Janet, their 20-something daughter, Kat, is furious at him and emotionally blackmails Warren by threatening to bar him from her wedding and future grandchildren unless he breaks things off with Sarah. Eventually, Warren decides he’s morally obligated to return to his wife, and he splits with Sarah. Several years pass, and Sarah settles into life without Warren, while he withers in the shadow of his unforgiving daughter. Robinson writes skillfully and sensitively about Sarah’s feeling for her children and grandchildren, and about her daughter’s agony and terror of childbirth, but Warren, infuriatingly weak and curiously inarticulate in the face of Kat’s haranguing, seems no more than a vehicle for Robinson’s story. This bleak outing offers glimmers of the author’s past greatness but doesn’t reach the same heights.

    • Library Journal

      September 13, 2024

      Sarah broke off her relationship with Warren, her college boyfriend, because she felt he was unreliable. Thirty years later, the two run into each other at the opera in New York City. In the interim, Sarah married and had two children; later, she divorced and inherited enough money to live comfortably in Westchester County. Warren also married, had a daughter, and became an architect. Sparks fly after their chance meeting, and the two embark on an affair, hoping for a second chance at life together. Although Warren lives in Boston, he and Sarah meet frequently. He tries to divorce his wife, only to have his daughter intervene, threatening to excise him from her life. Caught between Sarah and his daughter, Warren makes a choice that dooms them all to an unhappy fate. Hannah Choi offers a low-key, almost placid narration, allowing the story's high drama and emotional crises to speak for themselves. VERDICT Listeners will recognize parallels with operatic tragedy in the structure of Robinson's (Dawson's Fall) latest novel. Recommended for those who love high drama and fraught family dynamics.--Joanna M. Burkhardt

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
Check Out What's Being Checked Out Right NowThe Ohio Digital Library is a program of the State Library of Ohio and is supported in whole or in part by federal Institute of Museum and Library Services funds, awarded to the State Library of Ohio.