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Leaving - A Novel
Roxana Robinson
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R794
R654
Discovery Miles 6 540
Save R140 (18%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Sarah and Warren’s college love story ended in a single moment.
Decades later, when a chance meeting brings them together again, a
passion ignites—shaking the foundations of the lives they’ve
built apart. Sarah is hesitant to reclaim a chance at love after
her painful divorce, focusing instead on her career and grown
children. Warren has no such reservations: he wants to leave his
marriage but worries about how his wife and daughter will react. As
their affair intensifies without resolution, Sarah and Warren must
confront the moral responsibilities that complicate the demands of
love. Leaving charts a passage through loyalty and desire as it
builds to a shattering conclusion. In her boldest work to date,
Roxana Robinson brings “her compassionate clarity to this
revelatory book about the price of love and the enduring need for
it” (Amy Bloom, author of In Love).
This is without question the best book ever written on O’Keeffe'
New Yorker Born on a wheat farm in Wisconsin in 1887, the second of
seven children, Georgia O’Keeffe had her eyes wide open to the
beauty of nature from the very beginning, and by her twenties had
become a formidable artist, and a strikingly original and spirited
young woman. Moving first to Chicago and then to New York to pursue
her studies, her consciousness was enlarged by her discovery of the
modernist movement, and by the work both produced and shown by the
photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz. Making her way in the
world – first as a commercial artist and then as an art teacher
– O’Keeffe developed her own original style. When Alfred
Stieglitz discovered her work he was the first to exhibit it.
Twenty-three years her senior, Stieglitz later fell in love with
the artist as well as the work. O’Keeffe moved to New York in
1918 and married Stieglitz in 1924. She found herself a muse as
well as an artist, and entered a circle of America’s most vibrant
and boundary-pushing artists – and became herself one of the most
important and successful of them all. But O’Keeffe fell in love
again – this time with the bewitching landscapes of New Mexico,.
She began spending half of each year there, and when Stieglitz died
in 1949 she moved there for good, and lived there for the rest of
her life, taking pleasure in the otherworldly beauty of the Ghost
Ranch, north of Abiquiú. Following O’Keeffe’s early bud and
sensational bloom, her loves, losses, agonies and ecstasies, and
her painting against the dying of the light, Roxana Robinson’s
spellbinding and definitive biography has now been updated for the
twenty-first century with a new foreword and access to
never-before-seen letters. Written with the cooperation of the
O’Keeffe family, and with access to sources closed to biographers
during O’Keeffe’s lifetime, It remains an unparalleled portrait
of one of the most important female artists of all time.
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Loving (Paperback)
Henry Green; Introduction by Roxana Robinson
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R473
R411
Discovery Miles 4 110
Save R62 (13%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In Roxana Robinson's lucid and elegant prose, her characters' inner
worlds open up to us, revealing private emotional cores that are
familiar in their needs, their secrets, and their longings. These
people tell us the truth-not only about themselves, their
relationships, and their lives, but about ourselves as well.
In "Family Christmas," a young girl takes a holiday trip to her
grandparents', where the formal atmosphere is shattered by a
mysterious and chaotic event that she knows she's too young to
understand but struggles to comprehend.
In "Blind Man," a college professor copes with the onslaught of
grief after his daughter's death. In "The Face Lift," two college
friends renew their bond across a great cultural divide. The sad
and hilarious "Assistance" flawlessly details the tragicomic
aspects of ageing-seen through the eyes of a
daughter-turned-caretaker. The terrors of illness are explored in
"The Treatment," and in "Assez," a trip to Provence reveals the
true volatility of love-and reminds us that we often don't realize
that what we have is enough until it's gone.
"A Perfect Stranger powerfully and affectingly examines the
complex, intricate network of experiences that binds us to one
another. These stories are tender, raw, lovely, and fine-and they
reaffirm Roxana Robinson's place at the forefront of modern
literature.
Roxana Robinson's great gift for the telling detail and strong
sense of the emotional shoals lurking just beneath even the calmest
surface have inspired comparisons to literary greats like John
Cheever, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. In her first novel, we
meet Laura, a 29-year-old wife, mother, sister, friend, lover, and
erstwhile photographer whose life is painfully out of focus. A
month's vacation on the Maine coast with her son, her lover, Ward,
and her sister's family is supposed to be an idyllic period of
sustenance and calm, but for Laura, who believes that "entropy
governed the world, the universe, and the dinner hour," it turns
into the ultimate test of her ability to trust herself and others.
With trademark intensity and a deft touch for character and place,
Robinson creates a perceptive, believable, and gently humorous
portrait of an individual "waiting for something that would set her
life in order." Laura is as much a study of light and shadow as the
photographs she takes. Beautiful but insecure, talented but
unwilling to take risks, loved but unable to make a commitment, she
is paralyzed by fear and locked into a stasis that Ward is no
longer willing to accept. "You don't dare take a stand on
anything," he tells her. "You're so terrified of failure you don't
dare do anything." When her estranged husband arrives for a weekend
visit, however, the emotional collision rocks Laura's inaction,
causing a tiny shake of the kaleidoscope that creates a vastly
different pattern. The image is razor sharp at last: "As though she
were changing lenses, as though she had suddenly discovered another
light source," she sees that her life is her own. That new
understanding empowers her to make a symbolic -- and a literal --
leap of faith that saves her own life and the lives of those she
loves.
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Sparta (Paperback)
Roxana Robinson
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R458
R347
Discovery Miles 3 470
Save R111 (24%)
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Out of stock
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Conrad Farrell does not come from a military family, but as a
classics major at Williams College, he has encountered the powerful
appeal of the Marine Corps ethic: "Semper Fidelis" comes straight
from Sparta, a society where every citizen doubled as a full-time
soldier. When Conrad graduates, he joins the Marines to continue a
long tradition of honor, courage, and commitment over the course of
a four-year tour in Iraq. When we meet him, he has just come home
to Katonah, New York. As Conrad attempts to find his footing in the
civilian world, he learns how hard it is to return to the people
and places he used to love. Gradually, he awakens to a growing rage
and the realization that something has gone wrong.
Suspenseful, compassionate, and perceptive, Roxana Robinson's
"Sparta" "is a beautifully written novel that illuminates what
happens when we're estranged from the world as we know it"
("Chicago Tribune").
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Cost (Paperback)
Roxana Robinson
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R571
R436
Discovery Miles 4 360
Save R135 (24%)
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Out of stock
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Julia Lambert, an artist, is spending the summer in her old
Maine farmhouse. During a visit from her elderly parents, she hopes
to mend complicated relationships with her domineering father, a
retired neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into
the fog of Alzheimer's. But a shattering revelation intrudes:
Julia's son, Jack, has spiraled into heroin addiction. In her
attempts to save him, Julia marshals help from her loosely knit
clan, but Jack's addiction courses through the family with a
devastating energy, sweeping them all into a world of confusion,
fear, and obsession. In "Cost," Roxana Robinson applies her
"trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family
life" and creates a "warmly human and deeply satisfying book,
marking a new level of ambition and achievement for this talented
author" ("Chicago Tribune").
Roxana Robinson is the author of four novels and three
short-story collections, as well as a biography of Georgia
O'Keeffe. Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by
"The New York Times." Her work has appeared in "The New Yorker,"
"The" "Atlantic," "Harper's Magazine," "The New York Times, Best
American Short Stories, " and "Vogue," among other publications.
She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the
National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. She
teaches at the New School in New York. Longlisted for the
International IMPAC Literary AwardA "New York Times Book Review"
Editors' Choice
Named a 'Good Read' by the National Book Critics Circle
A "Washington Post" Top Five Book of the Year
A "Wall Street Journal" Best Book of the Year
A "Seattle Times" Best Book of the Year
A "Library Journal" Best Book of the Year In "Cost," Roxana
Robinson tackles addiction and explores its effects on the bonds of
family with her hallmark subtlety and precision in evoking the
emotional interiors of her characters. The result is a work in
which the reader's compassion for every character remains
unflagging to the end.
When Julia Lambert, an art professor, settles into her idyllic
Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her
fragile relationships with her father, a repressive neurosurgeon,
and her gentle mother, who is descending into Alzheimer's. But a
shattering revelation intrudes: Julia's son Jack has spiraled into
heroin addiction.
In an attempt to save him, Julia marshals help from her looseknit
clan: elderly parents; remarried ex-husband; removed sister; and
combative eldest son. Ultimately, heroin courses through the
characters' lives with an impersonal and devastating energy,
sweeping the family into a world in which deceit, crime, and fear
are part of daily life. "Robinson's fourth novel is an engrossing
tale of a patrician family's unraveling during a summer in Maine.
Julia Lambert is a divorced artist, trying to entertain her
oppressive, former neurosurgeon father (he points out everything
that's wrong with his daughter's run-down cabin) and her
self-effacing mother, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
Julia's elder son suspects that his younger brother, Jack, is a
heroin addict, and when this turns out to be true an intervention
is staged. The family's ugly, dysfunctional history pours out in
the process, in sharp contrast with the halcyon setting. Robinson
moves nimbly among the numerous characters' mind-sets, and although
Julia's meditations on 'the long tradition of luminist painting'
can drag, Jack's story maintains its tension until the final,
affecting pages."--"The New Yorker
"
""Cost" is unusual for being as plot-driven as it is
character-driven, and the assured manner in which Robinson builds
toward the inevitable train wreck is matched by her acuity in
bringing us inside the characters' minds . . . [Julia] gains the
strength not only to bear a grievous separation from her younger
son but, more significant, to question the separations she has
imposed on the most intimate relationships in her life. Why, she
wonders, has she done this? . . . Robinson has already shown us
why, having exhumed the many reasons in the preceding pages. But
the question remains worth asking, not only by Julia but by any of
these characters--by anyone, period, still struggling to connect.
With the novel's final words, which made me catch my breath,
Robinson suggests the enormous stakes involved in pursuing the
answer."--"The New York Times Book Review"
"Scarily good . . . I've never read such a spot-on description
of the mingled feelings of affection and frustration one feels for
one's parents as Robinson spins out here with sometimes comic
effect . . . One of our best writers."--"The Washington Post"
""Cost "is both lyrical and unsentimental, richly honest and
humane--summer reading of uncommon stature."--"The Wall Street
Journal"
"Set mostly in a Maine summerhouse more charming than functional,
this is a strikingly realistic, psychologically astute study of
family relations in modern America's educated class. As in a family
itself, competing perceptions of events past and present crowd the
pages. Self-involved preoccupations overwhelm many touching moments
of understanding; defensive postures become hurtful habits nearly
impossible to shift. But when compared with the single-minded
obsession of the younger son, whose heroin addiction organizes the
plot, the degree to which the rest of the characters value and care
for one another, despite their normal measure of self-interest, is
arresting. Robinson gracefully launches and bolsters her
psychological insights with concrete details of her settings. As
always, she writes with impressive polish at both the sentence and
structural levels."--"The Atlantic Monthly
"""Cost" is such an apt title for the latest book of novelist and
Mount Desert summer resident Roxana Robinson. In the novel, much of
which is set in Maine, the cost to Julia Lambert, the protagonist,
and to her immediate and extended family of her son Jack's heroin
addiction cannot be quantified, nor can the cost of the alienation
between Julia and her aging parents. In reading this novel--even
when some of the details made me uncomfortable--I cannot ignore how
Robinson's characters exemplify people I know and how perceptively
she depicts them. As the plot unfolds, the reader slowly realizes
not only that the costs are searing and exist on so many
levels--psychological, emotional, financial, physiological--but
also that various characters in their interior monologues
frequently allude to 'risk.' And taking risks incurs costs.
Robinson's mastery of the interior monologue gives the narrative
depth and intimacy. One identifies with the character and intuits
what may occur. While Jack's heroin addiction is not immediately
known, the reminiscences of his parents, brother and grandparents'
throughout the novel reveal that Jack has always courted trouble.
'Jack always went too far. His exploits were too perilous, the
risks always too great, ' recalls Steven, his older brother. But
the costs in the novel extend beyond the cost of heroin addiction
and alienation. There are the emotional costs of losing a beloved
son, and there are the physical, mental and emotional costs of
aging. Robinson effectively portrays these costs, particularly in
her characteriz
Authoritative editions of great classics of world literature
feature introductions by acclaimed writers, meticulous translations
of foreign literature, commentary by distinguished writers and
critics, biographical notes, and a comprehensive Reading Group
Guide bound into each volume.
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