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

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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. Each of the friends’ lives are followed in narrative threads which intertwine, interspersed with snapshots from their past filling in their stories. New mum Cate, struggling to hold it together in those difficult early months, admits that she sometimes wonders whether having a child was the wrong choice for her; this infuriates Hannah, who responds by curtly advising Cate to "see the doctor" and "take some pills". Lissa thinks) “there’s bugger all between thirty and fifty, not just in Chekhov, but in everything else. The young woman whose desire for a baby eats into her marriage and her husband who the reader can see from the start will stray because of the pressure.

What is original in Hope’s approach is the intimate and yet dispassionate elegy to what might have been. These three are bound together in friendship, meeting regularly, sometimes sharing problems, sometimes donning a brave face and sometimes looking enviously at each others’ lives. This could have been great, but its characters end up moving within such narrow bonds, all wanting the same things. As time goes on, the balance of friendships continue to shift, as jealousies and arguments push them away and, sometimes, bring them closer together. Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).Während Cate eher zufällig Mutter geworden ist und an der ihr nun zugeschriebenen Rolle zu zerbrechen droht, kämpft Hannah in einer eigentlich glücklichen Ehe mit einem unerfüllten Kinderwunsch. Her relationship with mother, Sarah, is strained and she has given up on falling in love after the catastrophe of her last egomaniac boyfriend. I can see how some have made comparisons to Sally Rooney, but I think Hope's writing is less crisp and insular, and more expansive.

A beautiful novel, not as ambitious as Hope’s previous historical fiction, but possessed of an exceptional veracity. The plot never really felt like it was going anywhere, I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, and hated quite a few of them, and I feel like the novel missed so many opportunities to explore really interesting topics. Ultimately, the novel’s message is a simple one: life is tough and we will often make mistakes and compromises, but we just do the best we can and try to be there for each other. The mother who feels everyone else has motherhood down pat exceptt for her, the woman who feels it will complete her and has no backup plan , the woman without any solidly defined boundaries of her life.Without spoilers I’ll just say that I found some of Lissa’s actions impossible to understand to the degree that it fractured the experience of reading the novel for me and I also struggled to see Cate as as fully fleshed out a character compared to the other two. The woman so desperate for a child she ‘drives her husband away’ and the restless suburban mum who regrets settling so soon, felt clichéd. Her contemporary fiction debut, Expectation, explores themes of love, lust, motherhood, and feminism, while asking the greater question of what defines a generation. This desperate situation is juxtaposed against rose-tinted flashbacks to Cate's past life as an activist, and her relationship with a wild, free-spirited woman named Lucy.

The point is that Hannah struck me as a selfish and excessively single-minded character, and I was looking forward to seeing her grow. The worry about climate change— they worry about knife crime and gun crime— they were about their own relative privilege. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. Lissas Leben verläuft hingegen in ganz anderen Bahnen - sie ist Schauspielerin und steht endlich vor ihrem Durchbruch auf der Theaterbühne. It promises to explore female friendship, but is yet another story of women who don't really have each others' backs; all of them screw the rest over at one time or another.

Cate’s childhood friend, Hannah, is the deputy director of a charity and married to a university lecturer, Nathan. This tale of three women as they navigate their friendship and life events was a fast and easy read.

Hannah, after a miscarriage and numerous failed IVF attempts, is anguished, guilt-ridden and angry, with herself, with her distant husband, with the universe which so readily grants others’ wishes but will not grant hers. This story of three best friends and their struggles to find lasting relationships and purpose spans several decades but focuses on 2010, when Cate, Hannah and Lissa are 35. If she does, we don't see it; after Hannah goes into labour, the book skips seven years ahead to the epilogue, and forty-something Hannah seems perfectly happy with her perfect daughter.Most of all, it explores that liminal space between expectation and reality, the place – full of dreams, desires and pain – in which we all live our lives. This book is rich with emotional depth and beauty, it grapples several heart-breaking issues and slowly, subtly, draws the reader further and further into an exquisite story. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Overall, this book is a compelling character study of three women coming to terms with how their lives turned out. Red Magazine says it « will resonate with approximately 99% of women », so I guess I’m part of the 1%… Sure, it’s an addictive reading, but I expected so much more from this novel…!