#BlogTour-‘Expectation’ by Anna Hope

About the book…
‘Like Normal People only with female friendship under
the microscope…It’s exceptional – so gorgeously
written and reads like a love letter to London. I highly
recommend it.’
Stacey Halls
Sunday Times Bestselling author of The Familiars

‘A generation-defining book, honest and relatable on motherhood, ambition and sex.
Like Normal People with female friendship under the microscope.’
The Sunday Times bestselling novelist Erin Kelly

‘Unfolds with real pace, but with such beautifully observed and gripping writing. Luminous, electric,
funny, devastatingly truthful.’ – Rachel Joyce

Hannah, Cate and Lissa are young, vibrant and inseparable.

Living on the edge of a common in East London, their shared world is ablaze with art and activism,
romance and revelry – and the promise of everything to come.
They are electric. They are the best of friends.
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?
‘Expectation’ is a novel of the highs and lows of friendship – how it can dip, dive and rise again.
It is also about finding your way: as a mother, a daughter, a wife, a rebel.
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.

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things BlogTours and Doubleday UK for the blog tour invite and paperback copy of ‘Expectation’ which is published, in hardback,audiobook and ebook formats on 11th July.

This has rocketed its way into my top 10 books of 2019-it recalls a time I am all too familiar with and themes of feminism, female desire and hopes for the future.

The three friends meet in the mid 90’s , Lissa and Hannah at a course called Feminisms,and Cate who joins their group , sleeping on Hannah’s sofa when she has nowhere else to go.

Starting in the early Millennium, with a portrait of 3 young women at ease with their lives, not rocking the boat but not conforming either, appearing as graces and objects of curiousity to outsiders , they represent the pinnacle of womanhood. Educated, in touch with their wants and desires , their expectations are that life will meet them at their points of need.

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 they were and want they wanted from life. It’s a disconnetion rather than a dissatisfaction, as though in their own way, the goals that all three chased have led them to a place that they feel lost in.

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.

Successful Hannah, married to Nathan would kill to be in Cate’s shoes as she undertakes another round of IVF. Her expectation of being able to get pregnant has been cruelly dashed and her marriage is reduced to her ability to conceive, this need has become all consuming.

Lissa is the only one who actually is still actively trying to achieve her goal of being an actress, juggling charity work, auditions and life modelling. She appears to have a freedom that the other two do not, but in that freedom-no partner, no children, no roots-she drifts endlessly in hope of making her mother, Sarah, proud.

”Your generation,’her mother says quietly.”Honestly .You baffle me you really do.”

”And why is that?” Lissa pushes away her bowl,

”Well.You’ve had everything.The fruits of our labour.The fruits of our activism. Good God we got out there and we have changed the world for you.For our daughters.And what have you done with it?”

In this, Anna Hope has nailed the essence of the book and the essence of these women. She has gathered the experience of women, the expectation on them to do it all, have it all and with each of her protagonists the weight of expectation has them truly believing that they have somehow failed. However, the outside would casually remark that they do have it all-the house, the job, the freedom, the child, the ability to try or give up on IVF, all this is a luxury fought for by our feminist forerunners.

But this is the modern feminist fallacy-given the choice, the opportunity, why do we always feel like we are failing? 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. They represent us, at different junctures, and as a woman reader, this is keenly felt, in this perfectly named novel. We expect so much from ourselves,and feel we owe the world so much that we don’t actually stop and be kind to ourselves anymore. It is as though we are in mourning for the grownup woman we expected to metamorphosize into whilst inhabiting her body.

It is a beautifully resonant novel that grips your heart,I think it will take many re-readings to entirely grasp the enormity of what Anna Hope is saying whilst feeling that the women , with their individual paths, will echo with the female reader more acutely at different stages of their lives.

Moving, elegant and with a lot to say about the lives of modern women with a firmly London centric sense of place, this is not to be missed.

About the author…

Anna Hope studied at Oxford University and RADA.

Her contemporary fiction debut, ‘Expectation’, explores themes of love, lust, motherhood, and feminism, while asking the greater question of what defines a generation.

She lives in Sussex with her husband and young daughter

Links-http://annahope.uk/

Twitter @Anna_Hope

             @DoubledayUk

              @annecater