Old Flames, New Strains

Roxana Robinson has written a brilliant novel about the complexities of late-in-life love. It felt so real, I had to speak with her to find out more about its origins.

Novelist Roxana Robinson © Beowulf Sheehan; her new novel ©Deborah Copaken

The pandemic sucked in many ways, but one of the more frustrating (if less critical) ways in which it sucked, for me and apparently for others as well, was that, for the first time in my life, I could not read. By which I mean, yes, I could still read read, especially news stories and works of nonfiction, but I could not make my way through a novel without getting distracted: by doom-scrolling, by laundry, by racing thoughts, by the sirens screaming outside in the streets. Reading fiction, which had so often provided my brain both safe haven and transcendence, suddenly felt like reading a foreign language. It didn’t help that, right after the vaccine became available, my post-marital relationship suddenly went up in flames, and, once again, fiction could neither match nor transcend the actual plot twists I was living day-to-day.

It’s been nearly three years since that midlife conflagration, and while I blamed the relationship’s end, in the immediate aftermath, on my partner’s infidelities, addictions, and lies—“The trifecta!” I’d joke with friends, trying to ease the pain of his betrayals by making light of them—I now see, in retrospect, how a fourth element might have not only triggered those three but also how it probably spelled our doom from day one. Especially now, after having gobbled down Roxana Robinson’s brilliant new novel Leaving in two days flat: the first novel I’ve read, post-pandemic, in which I became so engrossed by the story, I ignored hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and every single ding, buzz, and beep of my phone to keep reading.

Every good love story, whether comedy or tragedy, has to have a barrier to the characters’ love in order to keep its audience/readers invested in a happy ending. In Romeo and Juliet, it’s a family feud. In When Harry Met Sally, it’s the idea that men and women can’t be friends because sex always gets in the way. In Love Story, it’s cancer. In Pride and Prejudice, it’s, well, pride and prejudice. In Anna Karenina, it’s Anna’s husband and young child. In Casablanca, it’s the fact that Victor Laszlo didn’t actually die in the concentration camp.

In Leaving, we get a brand new barrier to consummation, or at least a barrier I can’t remember having come across in fiction: Warren’s grown child, Kat, tells her father that he must choose between Sarah—his old flame, with whom he’s reconnected and fallen in love after a chance encounter—and her. If you think that seems an unlikely scenario for a love story, I’m here to tell you, from personal experience, that it is not. And reading about it in the context of these two fictional characters, Warren and Sarah, flipped on a switch in my head.

To wit: my ex-partner and his grown son had already been estranged for several years by the time I entered the picture, for reasons best left between them. But when this son, whom I’ve never met, found out that his father and I were moving in together, he gave him an ultimatum: break up with me, and he would end their estrangement; move in with me, and he could continue to kiss their relationship goodbye forever.

How can any relationship survive that kind of live grenade—“It’s her or me”—lobbed from a grown child, however aggrieved? This is the gnawing question at the heart of Leaving, and it will keep you turning pages long into the night, until its surprise ending that left this grateful reader breathless.

Even better, reading Robinson’s novel gave me a gift. It allowed me to see my ex-partner’s destructive antics in a new and more generous light: not just as assholery, but as a subconscious rebellion against being forced by his child to make an impossible choice. Of course, instead of making that choice, he burned his bridges to both of us. Which is its own choice. I won’t ruin the ending of Leaving to tell you what Warren chose to do after his child’s ultimatum, but I am urging everyone I know to buy the book and read it.

For my own sake and psyche, I have long ago forgiven what my ex-partner did to me. But I cannot forgive what he did to my grown children, all three of whom generously accepted him into their lives and were equally shocked, unbalanced, and hurt by his behavior. My youngest especially, who lived as the man’s stepson from ages 11 to 15 and then never heard from him again. But reading Leaving did provide a new sense of closure and acceptance, as well as offering what the best novels always provide: empathy for the human struggle. In all of its many forms. Whether you’re the father whose child has cut him out of their life; or the child hurt by their father’s behavior; or the children of the abandoned woman; or the woman herself, suddenly feeling the silence of her emptied home after having lost what she thought was love.

Late-in-life love is tricky. We all come with baggage, including, so often, grown children, whose needs, feelings, and lives must be taken into account, no matter how many years it’s been since they’ve lived under our roofs. And I’m not only grateful to Robinson for bravely and brilliantly wading into this too-often-hidden if more-common-than-you-might-think terrain, but also to her publisher, W. W. Norton, for seeing the hunger and untapped market for such stories.

A couple of weeks ago, I reached out to Robinson and asked about the origins of Leaving. I was certain, knowing nothing about her personal life, that she must have either lived a similar late-in-life love story or somehow figured out a way to place spyware inside my home. Spoiler alert: I was wrong on both counts. But we had a lot of fun getting to the bottom of my questions and thinking about her characters, who are just as flawed as all of us.

To hear our conversation, please click on the video below.

Meanwhile, last week in the U.S., we passed the four-year anniversary since the beginning of the pandemic. All of us lost someone or something. But, thanks to Leaving, I’m happy to report that reading fiction, thank goodness, is not one of my somethings. And thanks to the man patiently waiting for me to finish reading the novel, so he could turn out the light on our bedside table, that some late-in-life love stories actually can—and do—have happy endings.