Expectation
A Novel
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- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
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.
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?
In contrast, Hannah continues to endure round after round of unsuccessful IVF treatments. The process is taking its toll on her physically and emotionally—and, she worries, creating distance between her and her husband Nathan. She is godmother to Cate’s son, but every time they get together, it’s a trigger.
Beautiful and unattached, Lissa is re-evaluating what it means to be an actress in her thirties. While she fiercely resists convention, she’s also lonely. A chance encounter in the British Library with Nathan has her wondering if she missed her best chance at love when she introduced him to Hannah.
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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hope's enthralling latest (following Wake) propels readers into the lives of three women steeped in personal and political anxieties. Lissa and Hannah, best friends from college, live in London, while Cate, their former roommate and Hannah's best friend from high school, has settled down, gotten married, and moved to Canterbury, where she rues the isolation of her new home and struggles with postpartum depression. Meanwhile, Hannah exhausts herself with rigid routines as she and her husband give it one last go at an IVF pregnancy, and Lissa dreams of life on the stage amid crippling loneliness, a fraught relationship with her artist mother, and regret over her acting career not panning out. Hope breaks the narrative into succinct, startlingly focused chapters that cut between the characters' experiences in their youth with tensions in adulthood, tracing a jagged triangle around their lives as they face adultery, fierce competition, and lingering guilt over not being there for each other in the past. The book's best moments emerge in the women's frank discussions about their sex lives and sexuality, and their anxious grappling with the future. Hope has a bead on what her readers want and she delivers.
