Caroline Moorehead

Wishful thinking: Leaving, by Roxana Robinson, reviewed

Two former college sweethearts meet by chance in their sixties and fall in love again. But the trouble it causes makes a happy ending impossible

Roxana Robinson. [Credit: Beowulf Sheehan] 
issue 24 February 2024

One evening, a man and a woman who haven’t met for decades bump into each other at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It’s a familiar tale, but one to which Roxana Robinson brings many twists in her highly enjoyable latest novel, Leaving.

Sarah and Warren were childhood sweethearts in a suburb outside Philadelphia. Sarah was uncertain, made biddable and cautious by cool, judgmental parents. Warren was bold and full of ambition and crazy-sounding dreams. They proved too much, too threatening, for the timid Sarah and she married a man she thought a safer bet. It turned out to be a mistake. Rob, who has electric blue eyes and an intimate manner, skitters from one improbable career to the next. They have two children, a boy, Josh, and a girl named Meg. When they divorce, Sarah retreats to her house in Maine.

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