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

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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. The weight of societal expectations has these women caught in a loop of success, fertility and motherhood. Furthermore, despite it’s somewhat novel structure, I found the writing style of this book lacklustre and dull; Descriptions of characters and events lacked and real depth and failed to draw me in.

Expectation was very nearly a compelling and incisive story about a trio of thirtysomething women - Hannah, Cate and Lissa - struggling to get their lives on track. He can clearly see that Cate is struggling with being a mother, and offers to give her a day or two off but throughout the whole book, we never see him lift a finger to take care of his child. Each of the friends’ lives are followed in narrative threads which intertwine, interspersed with snapshots from their past filling in their stories. 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? That last bit is especially overblown, though the reference to a particular generation does indicate that this is really meant for an early-40s female audience, though women some years either side of that should still enjoy it.

This is a beautiful story of female friendship and the struggles women face, about wanting to have it all. Deserves to feature on many a prize shortlist’ GUARDIAN’A brilliant exploration of friendship, feminism and thwarted ambition’ PANDORA SYKES______________________What happened to the women we were supposed to become?

The writing surrounding the issues of fertility and motherhood were poignant and affecting, but everything else just wasn't really for me. The book starts off on the slow side and then gradually gets more and more interesting as it progresses. Anna Hope has brought a time-worn theme up to date: thirty-something, ex-college friends looking back over their life choices and facing the realisation that previous generations of women have had to accept - that they can't easily ‘have it all’ when the biological clock is starting to speed up.

I understand that that is a book about motherhood, the expectation (it is the title after all) and the reality. 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. I feel that these difficult to explain tensions and links between women are likely as alien to men as any of the nuances of male friendship are to me.