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

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As time goes on, the balance of friendships continue to shift, as jealousies and arguments push them away and, sometimes, bring them closer together.

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. But ultimately, the story and its message left a sour taste in my mouth, and everything I liked about Expectation was tainted by its conclusion. Each women suffers through their heartbreak, fear, desperation and grief, all the while coming to the plummeting realisation that they are not who they were, they are not even who they thought they would be. This book surely shows what happens when people take different paths in their life and how sometimes you can lose touch with the people you felt the closest with in the past.Unfortunately, the pregnancy fails yet again; Hannah immediately goes back on her word and starts gearing up for attempt number four. Moving back and forth in time, we drop in on the characters in their schooldays and university days, through their twenties and thirties, and we watch them as each of the three women come to the realisation that the lives they once imagined for themselves are not the lives they are actually living. Over the course of the book, as desperation at the course their lives are taking mounts, their loyalties to each other are tested. The central question of the book, and actually the thing that most drew me in, was in the title Expectation, ‘what happens when we don’t fulfil our own expectations of ourselves? If I was to do a star rating, these were the things that would have brought the reading experience down from a five star to a four star for me.

A quick check of Hope’s acknowledgements touchingly reveals that her mother, like Sarah, was a Greenham Common veteran. Also struggled with just how terrible all of these characters are to each other - why on earth are you friends? I noted recently in a couple of reviews that there are books about women where the very fact of them being women is laid out over and over again with commentary about the ways in which that affects their lives negatively. But since friendship is a big part of this book, it was a problem for me when I never really felt like the three girls had any sort of close bond.The book is thoughtful, complicated and relatable, I found myself feeling the rollercoaster of emotions that the characters did but also reassured that as a woman in today’s world where our plans are always being tested, I'm not alone. 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.

Hope's novel is being compared to Sally Rooney's award–winning 'Normal People', but I personally found this author’s lower-key writing style more accessible and her characters rather more believable. Her feet are in thin sandals and she carries a canvas bag on her shoulder - inside it: good tomatoes, bread, Rioja, a goat’s cheese covered in ash. 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. Well, if you don't get the part, you could always do a one-woman show, Directors I Have Known and Been Rejected By. Lastly, I liked the ending because it brought the book full circle, but at the the same time I didn’t like it.The characters are all flawed, trapped in their present lives by longing for what they don’t have, yet they do have each other. Over the course of the novel the history of the friendships are unfurled, from first meetings to sharing a house in London, and the pace is perfect, filling in the gaps for the reader, fleshing out the relationships, explaining certain behaviours or built up grudges between the three. The writing surrounding the issues of fertility and motherhood were poignant and affecting, but everything else just wasn't really for me.