December
3
On the surface, it’s an old story: A couple falls into an adulterous relationship and, in the midst of the passion, confronts a tangle of practical and emotional dilemmas: Should desire trump loyalty? What do we owe whom? Does love carry moral weight?
But in Roxana Robinson’s new novel, Leaving, the old becomes new again in an elegantly rendered tale of college lovers who run into one another decades after their youthful break-up and discover that they have unfinished business. As the story unfolds from alternating points of view, readers become intimately involved with the divorced mother of grown children who hesitates to shake up her carefully constructed life – and balks at the ignominious reality of being the “other woman” – and the married man who feels no such reservations but longs for the approval of his wife and volatile grown daughter.
Evoking the silences and restraint that thwart desire, Robinson’s succinct prose and masterful pacing lead to an unexpected and shattering conclusion that lingers well beyond the last page.
Author of seven novels, three collections of short stories and a biography, Roxana Robinson is former president of the Authors Guild and teaches at Hunter College.
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On the surface, it’s an old story: A couple falls into an adulterous relationship and, in the midst of the passion, confronts a tangle of practical and emotional dilemmas: Should desire trump loyalty? What do we owe whom? Does love carry moral weight?
But in Roxana Robinson’s new novel, Leaving, the old becomes new again in an elegantly rendered tale of college lovers who run into one another decades after their youthful break-up and discover that they have unfinished business. As the story unfolds from alternating points of view, readers become intimately involved with the divorced mother of grown children who hesitates to shake up her carefully constructed life – and balks at the ignominious reality of being the “other woman” – and the married man who feels no such reservations but longs for the approval of his wife and volatile grown daughter.
Evoking the silences and restraint that thwart desire, Robinson’s succinct prose and masterful pacing lead to an unexpected and shattering conclusion that lingers well beyond the last page.
Author of seven novels, three collections of short stories and a biography, Roxana Robinson is former president of the Authors Guild and teaches at Hunter College.
Share this event:
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