When Liddy's doctor tells her she is six months pregnant she is stunned. For Liddy is a few days off her fiftieth birthday, and hasn't had sex with her husband for at least five years.

Shocked -- who wouldn't be? -- Liddy wonders how she is going to tell her grown-up family, who, it seems, need her more than ever. Laura, her eldest, a mother of three, longs for another baby. Miranda, her middle child, is desperate NOT to have a baby, even if it means losing her partner Richard. And Alex, her son, though happily living with his actor boyfriend Mungo, two dogs and various plants, is miserable in his dead-end job. And then there's Martin, her husband for over thirty years: will he be prepared to take on someone else's child?

But the new baby, at first destined to split the family apart, draws it together in ways no one could have foreseen. Compassionate, knowing and humorous, HOPING FOR HOPE is a wonderful debut novel about a family going through a mid-life crisis and surviving -- scathed but stronger.

Reviews

• 'Compellingly, Lucy Clare delves into the complex heart of a family crisis in a novel with wit, charm and compassion amply demonstrates that getting older doesn't mean that life gets any easier.' HELLO
• '[An] emotionally convincing debut novel.' THE TIMES
• 'A funny, poignant, intuitive account of family dynamics.' CHOICE
• 'A story written with tender humour.' SUNDAY MIRROR

Ebook (Microsoft)

Published 13/09/2001