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

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Yes, there's bugger all between thirty and fifty, not just in Chekhov, but in everything else. Perhaps in life. Perhaps this is it - Womanhood. The Wasteland Years." 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. Nathan reached a breaking point and told Hannah that he loved her but he just couldn’t do the IVF treatments any longer.

Expectation by Anna Hope | Goodreads Expectation by Anna Hope | Goodreads

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.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. Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. First 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. 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.

Expectation: The most razor-sharp and heartbreaking novel of

In much the same way that memory and self-analysis do not follow linear trajectories, the reader must piece together the fragments of these women’s lives, to understand how their choices, their personalities, their gender and the society they inhabit have contributed to the lives they have led. Devastatingly perceptive and emotionally wise, Expectation deserves to feature on many a book prize shortlist this year. I love discovering lists about which books to read, as I’m always looking for something new to read. I’m not a reading-monogamist, I like to try new things and often, and I’ll never commit to just one genre. So these lists ensure that my bookshelf is always stuffed full and that I never have to think too hard about where I’ll find my next book-fix. The only issue with a lot of these lists is that they’re always non-fiction books. When they recommend which books women should read or people in their twenties, they consistently mention non-fiction titles, without a novel in sight. The best thing about Expectation, the debut contemporary novel from actress/writer Anna Hope, is its honesty. All too often, fiction about female friendships goes to either side of the spectrum: either the women love each other so much that they’d never dream of falling out, or they are bitchy and catty and constantly at each other’s throats. Expectation is a lot more realistic. There’s an essential love between Lissa, Cate and Hannah that underpins everything. They enjoy spending time together; they care about what happens to one another. When Cate and Hannah talk, they talk about their children mostly [...] And their children talk, too - they know each other well, it is clear; they tell Lissa about a holiday they all took last summer to France. As Lissa watches, she feels a familiar ache. She will be forty-four next birthday. As the years in which she might conceivably conceive have diminished, she has felt a corresponding, surprising sadness rise. It is not that she wants a child, not really, she is happy with her life [...] It is just that sometimes, lately, on the way to work, or walking through the weekend markets, she will stop, made suddenly breathless at the sight of a baby. 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.

2. Beautiful World, Where Are You? - Sally Rooney

The woman speaks about the tomb, about how it was found on her father’s land, a mile or so from where she and her family live today. About the human remains that were found there – no skeletons, only jumbled bones, thousands upon thousands of them. About the eagle talons found in amongst them. About the theory that the bodies were left out to be eaten by the birds. Like the sky burials of Tibet. How only the clean bones were saved. They work hard. They go to the theater. They go to galleries. They go to the gigs a friends’ bands. They eat in Vietnamese restaurants. They drink free beer and wine The bike everywhere all the time and rarely wear helmets. They go to the flower market everything morning on Sundays. Cate is ravaged by new motherhood: both by sleep deprivation and the weight of maternal expectation. Subjected to the interference of an overbearing mother-in-law and the relentless demands of a young baby, her relationship with her partner, Sam, is increasingly distant: “This is the pattern of their evenings. A little passive-aggressive banter and then separate computers on separate chairs.”