Leaving

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. (Feb.)