Anna Hope

For the majority of this book, I was pretty sure it was a 4.5 that I would round up to a 5. The prose is lovely, the characters beautifully drawn, the family dynamics authentic, and the subject matter interesting. The reason there was a half-point deduction was that it occasionally lapsed into illogical, unnuanced looks at progeniture, generational wealth, planet stewardship, and colonialism. Then the last 20% came, and the lapses went from occasional to constant.

Certainly, the fact that we show more benefit from stolen land and the enslavement of people is important to acknowledge, and we should be considering how we can make up some of the wealth differentials that resulted from that. (We cannot undo the horrors, unfortunately.) But how far back do we go? Here, much was made of the records of human cargo on slave ships, records meticulous because Lloyds insured that human cargo. Is that when we start, when meticulous record keeping started? Because there was lots of land theft, disenfranchisement, and human trafficking before that. These are complicated questions, and Hope avoids complicated consideration of how we atone for our transgresions and those of our forbearers in favor of smug pronouncements and pouring out wine while reciting the names of those who were victims of the system (Who the hell does that help? The people who reaped the benefits and can now pat themselves on the back for the acknowledgement?)

Anyway . . . there were a lot of last-minute pat resolutions to systemic injustices centuries long and human complications decades long. I disliked most of the resolutions, and there was no lead-up to any, just cinematic epiphanies. Also, there was no resolution to one storyline with respect to a child's parentage despite a dramatic scene raising questions about the same, and that irked me. Still a worthy read despite the late-stage disappointment. The last chunk takes this from a round-up to a 5 to a solid 4.

Note: I listened to the audiobook read by the author, and she is a very good reader. I loved her narration. show less

The Ballroom is a beautifully told story of heartache, love, healing, and what happens when a few people have the power to decide the fates of others.

Anna Hope's writing has a poetic, literary feel. She paints the scenes so that we watch them as they unfold. I could see this asylum in the middle of the countryside, and I could almost smell the closed, rank air of the wards. The author captures the very essence of life in the early 1900s.

The story is told through three separate viewpoints. show more We have Ella, who is a young woman locked away for the crime of expressing her frustration with being treated as less than human. We have John, who is locked in the kind of despair that men are not allowed to express. And we have Charles, one of the doctors deciding the fate of others, who has, perhaps, more psychological damage than those he accuses of being mentally ill.

This is a melancholy, thoughtful story with incredible depth. It's complex without being weighed down by details. I was totally captivated by the setting and the characters. show less

Three women who kept the London home-fires burning while their loved ones fought in World War I cope with the aftermath of the war: the loss of those who didn't return, the lingering effects of combat and military discipline on those who did, and the ways in which the women themselves have changed. Their stories entwine over the course of five days in November 1920, the run-up to the second anniversary of the Armistice and the entombment of the Unknown Warrior.

The technique of meshing the show more stories of several seemingly unrelated characters works well here, executed thoughtfully and creatively, with occasional flashes to the Unknown Warrior's advance to his final resting-place. Believable characters and a fast-paced plot, sped along by the cuts from one story to another, contribute to the reader's enjoyment of a memorable novel. By the time I was halfway through, I couldn't put it down and stayed up very late to finish it. Readers of historical fiction and those who seek novels populated mainly by women or set in England will particularly enjoy Wake. show less

I was a big fan of Anna Hope's first book, Wake, but have yet to catch up with The Ballroom. However, with Expectation she has cemented her position in the list of those authors whose books I would gladly pick up without knowing anything about them.

This is a quiet novel. There are no seismic events, no murders, nothing out of the ordinary happens and yet it's full of human life. I say nothing out of the ordinary happens, but for the characters within the things that happen to them are far show more from ordinary.

Those characters are Hannah, Cate and Lissa. Three friends, but Hannah is the one that links them all. She met Cate at school and Lissa at university and the three have bonded over the years. We follow them through the years with a look at pivotal times in their lives, and also 2010 when most of the story takes place. We see how their lives came together and then diverged, their careers, their relationships, their children, their parents.

Put simply, this is a story about life. All those ups and downs, however small or large, and how they can affect everything else. It's about the weight of expectation versus the harsh realities of life.

These women are about my age, those middle years when you can look back and learn from what's gone before, and have the rest to look forward to and hopefully make the best of, and I found a certain amount of empathy with them. Cate, the new mother, who is struggling to cope; Hannah, desperate for a baby; Lissa, a jobbing actress, barely making enough to cover her rent. I thought they were all incredibly well-drawn, fascinating yet normal people.

It's hard to really put into words how immersive this book is. I read the last 200 pages in one sitting and just didn't want to leave it for a minute. I would say a certain amount of concentration is required at the beginning because the narrative jumps around a bit and I had to think carefully to pull the strands of each woman's life together, but then I became fully entrenched in their stories as if I knew them, knew their foibles, their likes, their dislikes, their feelings.

This is the kind of book I love, a slice of life story full of heart and emotion. I did have a big lump in my throat as the end approached. Only an exceptional writer can write this sort of book and make it unputdownable. Anna Hope has achieved that for me. show less