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 thee 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.

This book is just great, I flew through it! Hard hitting at times - a lot of stuff about the pressure women put on themselves and each other (what is EXPECTED of them) which really struck a chord with me. Though ultimately it captured a ~ zeitgeist ~, the nuance of this generation of women, something that defiitely reminded me of Sally Rooney. Would reccommend!

Anna Hope is an author whose books I am always eager to read. They are the type of fiction that you are still thinking about days after finishing, there are scenes in her book Wake that I still think about a few years after reading it. Hannah, Lissa and Cate have been friends for years. The reader sees their relationship develop throughout the novel through flashbacks. You see their dreams, first love, career, life choices and disappointments. You see the way they appear to others and the way they really feel. Most of the time they feel like failures, all for very different reasons. Hannah was the character who appealed to me most, not only because I had a lot of sympathy for her, and the many women who go through similar situations but also because she was a lot warmer than the other two. Cate, I did struggle with occasionally but she dd grow on me and I appreciated her sense of humour and her putdowns. Lissa I struggled with more. I didn’t dislike her but she was more aloof. The reasons for this were explained in some degree towards the end. The writing is stunning and the more I read about the three friends I was more reluctant to put the book down. I was totally engrossed in learning more about the three women and their families. None of it felt forced, there will be many people who see themselves, or their loved ones in any of these characters. Highly recommended, one of my favourite books this year and I hope its not a long time to wait for book 4.

I was a big fan of Anna Hope's first book, Wake, but have yet to catch up with The Ballroom. However, with Expectation she has cemented her position in the list of those authors whose books I would gladly pick up without knowing anything about them. This is a quiet novel. There are no seismic events, no murders, nothing out of the ordinary happens and yet it's full of human life. I say nothing out of the ordinary happens, but for the characters within the things that happen to them are far from ordinary. Those characters are Hannah, Cate and Lissa. Three friends, but Hannah is the one that links them all. She met Cate at school and Lissa at university and the three have bonded over the years. We follow them through the years with a look at pivotal times in their lives, and also 2010 when most of the story takes place. We see how their lives came together and then diverged, their careers, their relationships, their children, their parents. Put simply, this is a story about life. All those ups and downs, however small or large, and how they can affect everything else. It's about the weight of expectation versus the harsh realities of life. These women are about my age, those middle years when you can look back and learn from what's gone before, and have the rest to look forward to and hopefully make the best of, and I found a certain amount of empathy with them. Cate, the new mother, who is struggling to cope; Hannah, desperate for a baby; Lissa, a jobbing actress, barely making enough to cover her rent. I thought they were all incredibly well-drawn, fascinating yet normal people. It's hard to really put into words how immersive this book is. I read the last 200 pages in one sitting and just didn't want to leave it for a minute. I would say a certain amount of concentration is required at the beginning because the narrative jumps around a bit and I had to think carefully to pull the strands of each woman's life together, but then I became fully entrenched in their stories as if I knew them, knew their foibles, their likes, their dislikes, their feelings. This is the kind of book I love, a slice of life story full of heart and emotion. I did have a big lump in my throat as the end approached. Only an exceptional writer can write this sort of book and make it unputdownable. Anna Hope has achieved that for me.

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 thee 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.