Author Talk: “Leaving” by Roxana Robinson, in conversation with Gillian Blake

At the Cornwall Library, Roxana Robinson and Gillian Blake will discuss Robinson’s new novel, Leaving. Robinson is an award-winning novelist and biographer. Blake is Editor-in-Chief at Crown Publishing and a Trustee of the Cornwall Library.

Leaving is one of the Oprah Daily Most Anticipated Books of 2024. It will be released on February 13 and the advance word is coming in:

“Elegantly structured and written, shimmering with feeling and truth. A triumph.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred

“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.”
—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion

“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.”
—Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse

“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. ”
—Amy Bloom, author of In Love

“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.”
—Joan Silber, author of The Secrets of Happiness

“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.”
—Gish Jen, author of The Resisters

Late 1960s. Two high school seniors—Sarah and Warren—fall in love thinking it will last. Sarah, constricted by rules and guarded emotions, adores Warren’s confidence, adventurousness, and unconventional style. They are a lesson in chemistry. After graduating, the two attend different colleges and their romance dims. Diminished by calls from dormitory phone booths and differing views on their future, Sarah calls Warren to end the relationship.

Flash-forward forty years: Sarah and Warren meet unexpectedly on the grand staircase at the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan. The chemistry is still there. Reuniting seems a foregone conclusion, despite their familial circumstances (Warren is married, Sarah divorced). What they don’t predict is how disruptive and wrenching their “second chance” will be. Roxana Robinson’s Leaving: A Novel begins with a chance meeting at Puccini’s Tosca that escalates into a riveting love affair.

“I never thought I’d see you here,” Sarah says in the opening scene of Leaving, when she encounters Warren on the opera house’s red-carpeted staircase. Warren replies, “I always thought I’d see you somewhere.” Immediately, the complications and consequences of their affair become apparent. Their children object to their relationship. Months later, when Warren asks his wife for a divorce, she refuses to give him one. As Leaving builds to a shattering conclusion, Warren is forced to make decisions that lay bare the complexity of marriage and parenting as well as the tectonic shifts of family life. Ultimately, his affair with Sarah begs the question, “What does love require and who must pay the price?”

Leaving is an indelible story about the moral demands and responsibilities of love. With sparkling prose and deep understanding, Robinson illuminates the currents between desire and loyalty and how, as Joan Silber says,  “broken conventions lead to menace and threat.”

Roxana Robinson is the author of 11 books; seven novels, three collections of short stories, and the biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the McDowell Colony and the Guggenheim Foundation. Four of her books have been named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. Sparta was named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the BBC. Cost was named one of the Five Best Fiction Books of the Year by The Washington Post and was shortlisted for the prestigious Dublin Impac Award. Robinson is the recipient of many awards, the most recent one for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community from the Authors Guild, 2022. She is a President Emeritus of the Authors Guild, and is currently a member of their Council. She teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College. Her books have been published in England, France, Spain, Germany and Holland. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s, Best American Short Stories, and The Cornwall Chronicle.

Gillian Blake, SVP, is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief at Crown, a division of Penguin Random House. She has edited many bestsellers, including Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sixth Extinction, Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry, Rachel Maddow’s Prequel, Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers and Matthew McConaughey’s Greenlights. She has worked with many distinguished authors, among them Andy Cohen, Sheila Heti, Rob Lowe, Jaron Lanier, Anthony Doerr, Kate Walbert, Peggy Orenstein, Harold Bloom, George Howe Colt and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. She is a Trustee of the Cornwall Library.

Leaving is published by Norton. 344 pages. $28.99. Copies will be available for sale.

This is a live event only. Registration is required.