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

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The three friends meet in the mid 90's , Lissa and Hannah at a course called Feminisms,and Cate who joins their group , sleeping on Hannah's sofa when she has nowhere else to go. They are stiff in an English way. Not like the Russians. The Russians are not stiff, not at all. They have vodka and grief and the blood of the land in their veins, and the English have weak tea and the damp.” It's a thoughtful, compelling story of friendship and finding happiness. In many ways Expectation is a story of ordinary life and the triumphs we can find in each day. I found it realistic and thought-provoking. I read this slowly and chewed on it, and I sincerely appreciate the author’s messages. 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.

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

Lissa thinks) “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.”

Hannah estudia a estas personas y piensa: aquí, la vida está aquí. Como si desde el principio una parte de su interior hubiera estado entregada a la ardua tarea de crearse una piel, en medio de la oscuridad y del silencio, y ahora ya estuviera lista para lucirla, para entrar en la luz.”

Expectation by Anna Hope - Yorkshire Times Review: Expectation by Anna Hope - Yorkshire Times

I'm so bored. I'm reading this book and realising that I'm not paying attention anymore. I just dont care for the characters, they're constantly complaining and rather uninteresting. Also the time frame just keeps jumping around everywhere which confuses me and I keep forgetting who is who. They all just blend into one.

Welcome to Symptoms of Living! A place where I like to relieve myself of the barrage of thoughts and ideas filling my mind. Here I'll take a look at various topics, from books to BPD, series to self-harm, there's nothing that we can't, and shouldn't, talk about. Expectation by Anna Hope delves into the disappointed lives of three women, as years after graduating university, the gap between the lives they imagined for themselves, and the ones they ended up living, has inevitably widened.

Expectation by Anna Hope | Goodreads

You must keep hold of your friendships, Lissa. The women. They’re the only thing that till save you in the end.” 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. In a nutshell: I’m not saying it’s profound or even very memorable, but it’s relatable and enjoyable, and it made me sad that I don’t have any really close girlfriends. 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, You must keep hold of your friendships, Lissa. The women. They’re the only thing that will save you in the end.”I understand that that is a book about motherhood, the expectation (it is the title after all) and the reality. And, I appreciate the variety of perspectives on the subject included in it – including the struggles of the dads which are touched on meaningfully a few times. BUT, But, there is an aspect of the narrative that I am incredibly angry about. And, sorry to say that is pretty much all that is going to follow in this review. It seems to me that the author left no room in the narrative for a woman to be okay with being childless. Hope is such an elegant writer that it is simply a pleasure to absorb the words she weaves together. There is almost a musical cadence at times which, despite the thought-provoking content, makes it a very comfortable read.

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