“You must keep hold of your friendships, Lissa. The women. They’re the only thing that will save you in the end.”
Such is the advice a mother gives her daughter in Anna Hope’s profoundly intelligent and humane third novel, Expectation, about the disjunct between the lives we once imagined for ourselves and the lives we end up living.
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.”
Cate’s childhood friend, Hannah, is the deputy director of a charity and married to a university lecturer, Nathan. They live a comfortable London life and yet for all her external successes, Hannah is desperately unhappy because of her inability to conceive despite repeated rounds of IVF.
Completing the trio of friends is failing actress Lissa, whose disappointment about the way her life has turned out runs deep: “She is the sum total only of her failures. She could float up over these people… this city that she has loved, but which does not love her back, which does not give her what she needs to live, only to survive.”
Through each of these characters, Hope explores what it means to be female in the 21st century and the various causes of our thwarted expectations. At one point Lissa’s fiercely independent mother asks her daughter: “You’ve had everything. The fruits of our labour. The fruits of our activism…. And what have you done with it?” It is a question that permeates the novel – the question about what level of freedom feminism has brought – as each character struggles with regrets and rivalries.
Oscillating back and forth in time, we first meet the women in their mid-30s but over the course of the novel encounter them at various ages from 12 to 44. It’s an ambitious structure, and one that demands the reader’s attention, but is all the more satisfying for it.
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.
• Expectation by Anna Hope is published by Doubleday (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
