Charting the dreams and disappointments of a group of East London women, Anna Hope returns with an electric study of friendship, frustration and the curveballs that life forces you to negotiate.
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.
Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 9781784162801
Number of pages: 336
Weight: 230 g
Dimensions: 198 x 127 x 20 mm
Profoundly intelligent and humane. Deserves to feature on many a prize shortlist - Guardian
A brilliant exploration of friendship, feminism and thwarted ambition - Pandora Sykes
One of the most intensely readable novels I've encountered this year - METRO
I loved it . . . 10 out of 10! - BRYONY GORDON
Will resonate with approximately 99 % of all women - RED magazine summer pick
Thoughtful, beautifully written, honest. A sensual book. I URGE YOU TO READ IT - MARIAN KEYES
Brilliant portrayal of long-term female friendships . . . I was gripped. - Prima
A Sally Rooney-esque evocative examination of female friendship - BEST SUMMER READS, i-newspaper
The real joy of this novel – while exploring just what second wave feminism has done for this generation of women (“you’ve had everything… we changed the world for you. For our daughters. And what have you done with it?”) – is in it’s writing; the dialogue and the honesty behind these characters who are doing their best, who are trying to live up to the fictional counterparts that they themselves have created… It’s the perfect summer reading - STYLIST MAGAZINE
Absolutely encapsulates what it means to be a young woman today, and beyond - Grazia Magazine
Hope’s writing is sublime and her characters so well fleshed out they will feel like friends at the end - Good Housekeeping Book of the Year
BEST BOOKS FOR JULY: Expectation has defied all my expectations and completely redefined the friendship novel. Each of the characters resonated with me and I’m in awe of the way Anna Hope captures what it means to be a woman, right here, right now, with all the precision of a surgeon’s knife. - Red Magazine Book of the Year
EDITOR'S CHOICE: I enjoyed this contemporary novel about the gulf between the expectation of how life will turn out and the reality... [it] taps into the current conversation about finding fulfilment and living a meaningful life. - Alice O'Keeffe, The Bookseller
Jaw-droppingly good - SARRA MANNING
Anna Hope has a way of getting inside difficult and painful moments, turning them inside out. I felt I knew these women as my own friends. Taut, electric, complex, funny. - RACHEL JOYCE bestselling author of THE UNEXPECTED PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY
Few novels leave me genuinely breathless with their brilliance. EXPECTATION is one of them. This book is beautiful. I am in AWE - HANNAH BECKERMAN
Succulent, tender and honest, EXPECTATION is about the relationships between women: love, loss, triumph and betrayal. It was one of those books that knowingly flirted, then seduced me and then utterly ravished me - TOR UDALL
A generation-defining book, honest and relatable on motherhood, ambition and sex. Like NORMAL PEOPLE with female friendship under the microscope - ERIN KELLY, bestselling author of HE SAID/SHE SAID
I loved it. Raw, honest, unputdownable. - TAMMY COHEN
I tore through EXPECTATION at the weekend. Exceptional gorgeously written and reads like a love letter to London. I highly recommend it - STACEY HALLS, bestselling author of THE FAMILIARS
I absolutely loved this. What really appealed to me was the depiction of the parents, about legacy and about what the mother's generation leaves for the one that comes after - ANNE YOUNGSON
An intimate and touching portrayal of female friendship that shows it's okay to just be - NINA POTTELL
So fresh, human, kind and relatable - JENNY COLGAN
Such a dark, relatable, elegant take on how time alters female friendships: how we become THESE people and our friends become THOSE people. Anyway, I loved it. You probably will, too - LIZA KLAUSSMANN, author of Tigers in Red Weather
A must-read. Will make you want to hug the women in you life - FABULOUS MAGAZINE Book of the Year
A deftly crafted hymn to the comfort and frustration of female friendship from one of our most gifted contemporary writers - WATERSTONES
Sensual and evocative, deeply attuned to both the inner lives of the protagonists - CULTUREFLY
The prose is beautiful, the characters achingly real, their flawed decisions enraging and yet somehow still relatable. This wonderful book will resonate with every woman who reads it - LOUISE O'NEILL
A quietly political story that suggests historic battles have left women with new impossible burdens of expectation. A marvellously tangy London novel - DAILY MAIL
Hope beautifully examines how female friendship, its issues entirely relatable, ebbs and flows over time in this wise and engaging read - SUNDAY EXPRESS
I have received an early reading copy of this book and I had no idea what to expect. However, while reading I got invested in Lissa, Hannah and Cate's lives as my own. I have found common grounds, understood... More
Another beautifully written book by Anna hope. Telling the story of three girls from what my daughter calls "the lost generation "between the baby boomers and the millenials. It is a... More
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Anna Hope in London last month. We heard her talk about this new book and was lucky enough to chat with her in person and get my proof copy signed.
I had previously read and...
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