Expectation: The most razor-sharp and heartbreaking novel of the year

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The most razor-sharp and heartbreaking novel of the year, EXPECTATION is a novel about finding your way: as a mother, a daughter, a wife, a rebel. Ten years on, they are not where they hoped to be. Amidst flailing careers and faltering marriages, each hungers for what the others have. And each wrestles with the same question: what does it take to lead a meaningful life? Dabei fällt das Lesen nicht immer leicht, es ist mitunter sehr schmerzhaft und auch zuweilen fast unangenehm, Hannah, Cate und Lissa auf ihren sich immer wieder kreuzenden Wegen zu begleiten. Die Geschichte ist wie ein Sog, aus dem man sich nur schwer befreien kann - ich konnte mich vor allem gedanklich lange nicht mehr von den drei Freundinnen losreißen. Zusätzlich wird der Roman auf ganz großartige Weise in prägnante Schauplätze (London, Canterbury) und das jeweilige (feministische) Zeitgeschehen eingebettet - inklusive einiger wirklich hinreißender Nebencharaktere, die mein Herz gewinnen konnten.

Expectation | Anna Hope | Review | Swirl and Thread Expectation | Anna Hope | Review | Swirl and Thread

Wake, published in the UK in 2014, has now been translated into over 20 languages. It was called ‘a masterclass in historical fiction’ by The Observer and shortlisted for New Writer of the Year at the National Book Awards in the UK. The three women in this book are all very complicated and complex. I found them to be utterly riveting. They’re all morally grey which makes them feel more real and raw. Sometimes they make decisions that others may find irritating, but to me that makes they more dynamic. With Hannah trying to have a baby and Cate dealing with the fallout of having a baby, childless singleton Lissa is the only member of the main trio whose motivation has nothing to do with babies. In fact, she doesn't want to have a baby at all - it is revealed that she had an abortion at some point in the past, and she suspects that her own mother would have been happier without a daughter getting in the way of her goals. So it turns out that the line I quoted earlier, a line I read as sarcastic - nothing beats Hannah's pain - was in fact meant sincerely. According to this book, there really is nothing worse than being childless, and it's Lissa who deserves our pity in the end. It's Lissa who missed out, Lissa who made the wrong choice, Lissa who gets left behind while the other two holiday together in France.

Through each of these characters, Hope explores what it means to be female in the 21st century and the various causes of our thwarted expectations. At one point Lissa’s fiercely independent mother asks her daughter: “You’ve had everything. The fruits of our labour. The fruits of our activism…. And what have you done with it?” It is a question that permeates the novel – the question about what level of freedom feminism has brought – as each character struggles with regrets and rivalries. In her first year of motherhood after an unplanned pregnancy, Cate is constantly exhausted, spiraling into self-doubt and postpartum anxiety. Her husband Sam seems oblivious, but maybe she’d prefer he remain in the dark. How can she admit the unthinkable—that she misses her freedom?

5 Fiction Books Women Should Read in Their Twenties

I’ve read two other books by Anna Hope, “Wake”, and “Ballroom”.....( both WWII stories) and now “Expectation”, (contemporary women’s fiction), which explores the dynamics of women’s friendships.Sometimes they feel they should worry even more about these things, but at this moment in their lives they are happy, and so they do not”. Which brings me to the second reason I'm in the one percent. This is a book with two themes: babies (having them, not having them, difficulty having them) and the tension between motherhood and career. Wow. Groundbreaking. It wouldn't be interesting even if Hope had something new to say on the subject, which she definitively does not. She throws some half-hearted activism plot points into the mix, presumably to earn the title quote of 'what happened to the women we were supposed to become?' Can't tell you, because I can't identify with any of the characters at any age. They worry about the future, about their children, about the world they will inherit, a world that seems so fractured and fast and even more splintered”. Fast forward to 2010 and life is very, very different. The weight of societal expectations has these women caught in a loop of success, fertility and motherhood. All 3 seem lost and dissociated from who

Expectation by Anna Hope – Shiny New Books Expectation by Anna Hope – Shiny New Books

In 2019, along with three other women, I co-founded Letters to the Earth, a campaign responding to the climate and ecological emergency. Letters to the Earth is now an anthology. Beautifully observed study of female friendship and a moving account of the collision between aspiration and reality' DAILY MAIL MUST-READFirst off, this novel is a slow burn. The book starts off on the slow side and then gradually gets more and more interesting as it progresses. Cate, the only one of the three who is a mother is drowning in her new role-expected by everyone to be doing better at it than she is, she is absolutely struggling with her son. Her husband and mother in law expect more of her than she can give to motherhood, she feels she has lost herself in this-no one has told her that this is a natural way to feel so she sleepwalks through the days.