Expectation

February 3, 2020
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. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM.

February 15, 2020
Cate, Hannah, and Lissa have been in one another's lives for years. From the bliss of their carefree, post-college years to the job insecurity, domestic doldrums, and infertility of their late thirties, they've counted on one another. The costs of fertility treatments are threatening to drive Hannah and her husband apart, while raising an infant without much input from her own partner is stretching Cate's patience thin. Lissa's acting career has all but stalled completely; she's too old to play fresh-faced ing�nues but too young for the role of the wise matriarch. As the three women confront the new realities of their lives, they realize the bedrock of their relationship may not be as strong as they once believed. Like Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings (2013), Hope's (The Ballroom, 2016) latest novel swirls, dips, and arcs around the lives of the three friends and their families. Hope's narrative voice is clear, cutting, and introspective as she examines the banalities and exhilarations of early middle-age. Fans of Wolitzer, Jane Smiley, and Wally Lamb will adore Expectation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)