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

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I strongly resent the narrative absence of it being okay to not want to be a mom. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the only character who doesn’t have a kid is the one who is villainized and made to suffer repeatedly. And, that is just not freaking okay. 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?

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In this sharply observed novel set in and around London, three college friends, now in their thirties, must come to terms with the gap between the lives they imagined for themselves and reality in the face of marriage, fertility struggles, and loss. This was the first book I read with my pandemic book club, and it was a hit! Candice has an incredible writing style, very personal and mimetic of an individual’s thought process. I like how the book dived into so many themes, including race, mental health, relationships and more. Yet, at its core, at least in my eyes, it was a novel about identity and how friendship can fit into that. I liked seeing how different Queenie was with her varying friends, as that’s something many of us have experienced and can lead us to doubt our true selves. But each self was a fragment of her true self. The recurring self-sabotage sometimes made it hard to keep reading, but it’s also something we’re all so guilty of, and through witnessing Queenie go down paths we know too well, maybe we can learn to take a different one next time.As each woman longs for what the others seemingly possess, will their bonds of friendship sustain them in this liminal phase of their lives—or will their envy and desire tear them apart?” - Expectation 2. Beautiful World, Where Are You? - Sally Rooney This is a love story about what happens when the love fades. It’s about staying in love, seizing love, forsaking love, and committing to love with everything you’ve got. And above all, After I Do is the story of a couple caught up in an old game—and searching for a new road to happily ever after.” - After I Do 5. Rachel’s Holiday - Marian Keyes 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. Expectation by Anna Hope – eBook Details Fantastically well-realised portrait of female friendship's joys and pains from an exciting new voice in British fiction' DAILY TELEGRAPH The story of 3 college friends, if you're a fan of Sally Rooney, you'll love EXPECTATION' IRISH EXAMINER

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

The fast lane is much too slow for Rachel Walsh. And Manhattan is the perfect place for a young Irish female to overdo everything. But Rachel's love of a good time is about to land her in the emergency room. It will also cost her a job and the boyfriend she adores. 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.Lissa is an actress who’s fed up of the grind. Cate’s a new mum who is lonely in her marriage. Hannah’s strenuous IVF journey has left her husband feeling shut out. Expectation follows Lissa, Cate and Hannah across the three decades they have been friends, charting their successes and failures, their rows and reconciliations. In any long relationship there are bound to be hurdles. Some of them prove surmountable for these three women. Some of them don’t. I am a big Marian Keyes fan, and earlier this year, I devoured four of her books within a month, and they’re pretty big! I think Marian is an expert in creating complex characters that you can’t help but root for, and she does this well in Rachel’s Holiday. Rachel is a prime example of this, as she is flawed in many ways, yet I adored her. I think this novel is an excellent example of the issues many of us suffer from, not the substance abuse itself, but everything in Rachel’s sense of identity and priorities. Rachel’s journey is touching and difficult, and it reminds us to keep going and keep improving.

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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.” But what is it all worth - the beauty, the parties, the doomed attempts to forge a career - what is it all worth, Anna Hope seems to ask, without a baby to make your life truly complete? There's even a bit where Lissa brings up her abortion and dutifully bursts into tears, because heaven forbid that a woman terminate her pregnancy and not regret it later. It wasn’t as though the topics and themes were inventive - but the writing was so seamless-readable - engaging - and real... that I’m glad I spent time with these characters. Hope leaves no aspect of everyday existence untouched. My only complaint is that I did not know the characters as well as I would have liked. They stray occasionally into the archetypal, especially in terms of their own personal conflicts. The novel encapsulates much in scope – not quite so much in depth. 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.You’ve had everything. The fruits of our labor. The fruits of our activism. Good god, we got out there and we changed the world for you. For our daughters. And what have you done with it?” Der Originaltitel von "Was wir sind" lautet "Expectation" - und nichts könnte besser zu diesem Roman passen! Es geht nämlich genau darum: Um die Erwartungen, die wir selbst, unsere Partner*innen, unsere Freund*innen, unsere Mitmenschen, die Gesellschaft an uns stellen. Wir sind umgeben von Erwartungshaltungen, manche erfüllen wir, anderen werden wir nicht gerecht und können das auch gar nicht. Anna Hopes Roman, übersetzt von Eva Bonné, greift dieses Erwartungs-Motiv auf ganz eindringliche Weise auf, sie lässt uns Lesende ihren drei Protagonistinnen sehr, sehr nahe kommen und schafft Figuren, mit denen wir uns auf ganz unterschiedliche Weisen identifizieren können. 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.