Expectation

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. (Apr.)