Hope

by Andrew Ridker

The year is 2013 and the Greenspans are the envy of Brookline, Massachusetts, an idyllic (and idealistic) suburb west of Boston. Scott Greenspan is a successful physician with his own cardiology practice. His wife, Deb, is a pillar of the community who spends her free time helping resettle refugees. Their daughter, Maya, works at a distinguished New York publishing house and their son, Gideon, is preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps. They are an exceptional family from an exceptional place, living in exceptional times.

But when Scott is caught falsifying blood samples at work, he sets in motion a series of scandals that threatens to shatter his family. Deb leaves him for a female power broker; Maya rekindles a hazardous affair from her youth; and Gideon drops out of college to go on a dangerous journey that will put his principles to the test.

From Brookline to Berlin to the battlefields of Syria, Hope follows the Greenspans over the course of one tumultuous year as they question, and compromise, the values that have shaped their lives. But in the midst of their disillusionment, they’ll discover their own capacity for resilience, connection, and, ultimately, hope.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Book Club, Family, Audiobook, Novels

432 pages, Hardcover

First published July 11, 2023

About the author

Andrew Ridker is the author of the novels Hope and The Altruists.

The Altruists was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Paris Review staff pick, an Amazon Editors’ Pick, and the People Book of the Week. Translated into more than a dozen languages, it won the Friends of American Writers Award and was longlisted for the Prix du Meilleur livre étranger and the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Prize.

Hope, also a New York Times Editors’ Choice, was named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, the Forward, and the Times of Israel. Longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, it is currently in development with a major streaming service as a limited series.

He is the editor of Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poeticsm and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Le Monde, Bookforum, Guernica, Boston Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Andrew lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

this legit might be my favourite book of the year, and a new all-time fav?? i haven’t had this feeling in MONTHS

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I'd rated this book when I was 20 pages in, I would have given if four stars. By the half-way point, it was down to three. And as you can see by the end, it was but two. I suppose it could be 2.5

That's a striking thing in a book. The further I went, the more I became aware of it's thinness and shallowness. I think the structure of the book explains a lot. This story focuses on a Boston-area family with four members--husband, wife, daughter and son. It's in four main sections. Each section is centered on one of the family members. So the first section focuses on the husband, the second on the daughter and so on. (These are not first person sections.) Each section also covers a specified time period. There is some but by no means complete overlap. This is not nearly as confusing as it sounds.

So the husband's section leads off. And it's interesting and breezy enough to read. Maybe it's a little weak on character--he does something rather blithely that maybe should be a bit more wrenching. But who's to say--we're just meeting him.

But with the ensuing sections I think the book hits trouble. The characters continue to make choices which don't quite fit. They become less and less plausible as human beings. And while at first I would have said the author can't write female characters, the last section (the son) is no better than the two preceding (daughter and mother.)

Overall I just lost patience.

One last thought. If this book had been written by a woman I'm pretty sure it would be labelled "chick lit" But it's by a man so it's domestic fiction. Sigh.

[Brandice · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Hope, it’s 2013 and the Greenspans are a well-off family living in the Boston suburbs. Scott is a successful cardiologist and his wife Deb is a big supporter of their community, volunteering to help refugees. Their daughter Maya works at a publishing house in NYC and their son Gideon is preparing to attend med school.

One night when Deb and Scott are hosting friends for dinner, they receive a phone call, throwing them off course — Scott has been caught in a work scandal. But this isn’t the only big development, and a series of events follows, impacting each member of the Greenspan family. Throughout the year, Scott, Deb, Maya, and Gideon must reckon with the consequences of their actions, for better or worse.

While I didn’t necessarily like every family member, they did feel authentic, human and flawed. I was definitely invested in Hope and had to know how things would turn out for the Greenspans.

[Tell · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5)

Ridker is an amazing writer- he has a gift with fleshing out the interior lives of his characters, painting a vivid portrait of a family in crisis. He has tremendous empathy for many of the secondary and tertiary weirdos who haunt the background of this novel, and the plots were vivid and memorable.

I wish we had spent more time with Deb and Scott, oddly- the son, Gideon, was a confused worm of a person, my least favorite kind of character, so I'm biased against him and his entire section of the book, while Maya was the kind of character I gravitate to but didn't fully coalesce for me.

If you love family novels, absolutely pick this one up. It perfectly captures a point in Obama era American identity that rang so true I wanted to invent a time machine to go back.

[Shereadbookblog · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is 2013 and the Greenspans live comfortably in Brookline Massachusetts. Scott is a physician, Deb, a former dancer, is now active in her synagogue resettling refugees, son Gideon is on the path to medical school, and daughter Maya works for a publishing company. But then Scott, needing extra money, is found to have falsified blood samples in a research study. Deb leaves him for her female lover, Gideon drops out of school and ends up in the Middle East, and Maya gets involved with a former teacher with whom she had a crush and loses her job.

This is well written, told from various POVs. There is humor and the author does capture the times and the lifestyles of people of a certain socioeconomic strata. While the book held my attention, I just didn’t engage with any of the characters.

Thanks to #netgalley and #penguingroup #viking for the ARC.

[Natalie all_books_great_and_small · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a gifted copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review as part of the tour hosted by Insta Book Tours.

Hope is a novel about a fictional family called the Greenspans who live a fairly comfortable and ordinary life. The story follows the POV of each family member with their everyday trials and tribulations.
Scott is the father who's trying to balance the family's finances slong with his mother's increasing demands, supporting his family and his marriage and carrying out his work as a cardiologist.
Deb is Scott's wife and mother to Maya and Gideon. Deb is well liked and well known in the community for her support work with refugees and is experimenting with her interest in same sex relationships.
Maya works at a publishing house and is struggling to find her way and what she really wants, career, and personally, too.
Gideon wants to follow in his father's footsteps, mostly to make him proud of his only son, but soon realises his fathers not as perfect as he thought he was.
When Scott is caught falsifying blood samples at work, a chain effect befalls on the family leading from one scandal to another. While the family starts ripping apart at the seams and their whole lives flip upside down, each one of them has to face their choices and consequences and find their way out of the downfall they've spiralled into.
Although I couldn't connect well with the family in this book, I did find their lives, choices, decisions, and reactions intriguing to read about. I did question some of their choices. However, who knows what we would all really do put in certain situations ourselves. I especially liked Scott's mum and the chaos she spins with each appearance.

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the face of it this novel is an ordinary story about an ordinary family. It could be any of us. Nothing really exciting happens, there's no murders or car chases. However as Gideon says "It didn't feel like a novel, but it did feel like life."

The Greenspans are on the cusp of change at the start of Hope. Father Scott is balancing his mother's increasing demands on his money along with supporting his family and maintaining an open marriage. Wife Deb is juggling her new found interest in the same sex with her inability to find something to really engage her interest. Daughter Maya is struggling to find her way in the publishing world and her personal life; and son Gideon is desperate to make his father proud until he realises that sometimes parents are fallible too.

This novel really does feel like life. I felt really engaged with a family who I've nothing in common with. The writing is excellent and you're swept along with the difficulties they encounter, often of their own making - including some absolutely insane decisions.

If I have a criticism it's that there really wasn't enough of Scott's mother, Marjorie, who flits in and out of the book causing mayhem wherever she goes. Everyone should have a relative like Marjorie - I expect quite a lot of us do.

Definitely recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley and Duckworth Books for the advance review copy.

[AsToldByKenya · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
this book is so close to being brilliant. With stronger direction, care, prose and more clever writer I could have loved it.

[Monte Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for suburban dramas. There's something about looking beyond the white picket fence and seeing the otherwise mundane lives of the inhabitants. Now the Greenspans might not lead the most mundane lives. Though that's part of what I love about his particular slice of literary fiction. It's more than just the clever turns of phrase that Ridker is able to come up with, but the way it highlights that people are more than just the facade they present.

The fallout of Scott attempting to be a good son drives him to committing fraud the fallout is almost unimaginable. The way the book is framed, with extensive sections for each member of the family flawlessly oscillating between the present and a key moment of their past and how that is tied back to the present is a masterclass in storytelling.

The way Ridker describes Gideon finding his grandmother's collection of bodice rippers and that leading to a love of romance novels and how those novels shaped how he viewed the world and his own approach to his love life is some of the best writing in regards to a "bookish" character that I've ever read. It's also contextualizes so much of who Gideon is as a person, and him being the last family member we get to spend deep dive time with that helps the reader to understand so much of his earlier actions.

Usually I'm wanting books to be longer, but this felt like just the right length. For those going in I will say there is a significant chunk of the book dedicated to a character processing the grooming they experienced in high school as this person shows back up in their life. I wasn't expecting that when I went in, so heads up. I think that Ridker handles that storyline really well.

Easily another top book of the year for me and I look forward to doubling back to Ridker's debut before eagerly awaiting what they write next.

[Anne Wolfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Torn between 3 and 4 stars as a rating, I have to go with 3 1/2. Hope is a well-written novel about a family of four and were it better edited, could have been a sure 4 Stars. It's a novel in four parts. Each part is told from the viewpoint of a family member. The first is Scott Greenspan, a cardiologist. who does drug trials as well as treating patients. He is married to Deb, a former dancer and now a volunteer. They have a daughter in her early twenties and a college age son.

The novel begins with Scott and his trying and annoying Jewish mother. We find out that she has become embroiled in a scam on OKCupid, where she has sent all her money to Germany in order to support a supposedly Syrian boy who just wants and education. As a result of needing cash to pay for his mother's posh continuing care community, Scott does the unthinkable: .he falsifies drug trial enrollees using his own patients' symptoms to make them fit the trial's requirements. Of course, he is caught and loses his medical license as well as his livelihood.

The second book is from his wife Deb's viewpoint. She has convinced Scott to try an open marriage and is having an affair with a woman who advocates for charter schools. She moves out after Scott is caught and moves in with her girlfriend.

The third part is devoted to their daughter who works in publishing who has just turned down a marriage proposal, screwed up at her job, and been fired.

Last chapter is the son, Gideon. He is pre-med and going to be a doctor like his dad. This section contains what I found the funniest of some very comical writing. When Gideon's maternal grandmother dies, he helps his mother clean out her house. A young boy at the time, he volunteers to help clean out a closet. To his surprise, he finds hidden shelves containing...no, not porn, but something better. His grandma was addicted to
Harlequin and other romance publishers' fiction. His guilty secret? He becomes addicted to the genre as well and it constitutes most of his sex education, The four stories, of course, interrelate into a single novel. Each section shows how each character's actions influence the others.

At almost 500 pages, this book requires an investment of time, much, but not all of which will be worth it. But if it could have been edited down to a tighter and more manageable plot, this book could have been so much better.

Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the early copy of this book. It is an honest review.

[Marjorie Murstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t believe you have to like the characters in the novel to love a book. I didn’t like either the characters or the book. But I read on and on and on and on

[Deborah Gibbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. Well written, but didn’t really go anywhere. I kept reading in hopes it it would all come together, but no.

[Rodrigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're trash like me and love nothing more than a story of (relatively) wealthy white people being insufferable and making terrible choices this book was like nectar from the literary gods.

[Joseph Sardella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book felt like a movie or light hearted but dramatic miniseries. It also felt like real life in the way that nothing was perfect but the tone matches the title and I am always impressed by, and personally love, something that’s realistically positive and not forced or cheesy. Not a trope was used in its hopefulness in my opinion. The ending was a little quick feeling but it was still good!

[Dianne Alvine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ridker is quite a talented writer, who has written a very interesting story about a year in the life of the four members of the affluent Greenspan family, who live in Brookline, MA. The characters are human, vulnerable and flawed. Ridker gives them distinct voices and devotes a section of the book for each member. There is a bit of unraveling in each of their lives and the family unit faces a break down.
I was especially taken with Gideon's journey, and I was thrilled that he freed the chickens. I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. So glad I did, because I found it to be an amazing read.

[Eliza Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

uhh what the hell is up with this guy cherry picking what moral failing we’re held hostage to witnessing and which ones he lets slide?? also the way he edged the story the whole time to ultimately nothing?? what is good with his narrative, his writing wasn’t bad but the road to the end….. smh

[Emily Sesno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Man suffers consequences of his own actions, blames all the women in his life.

But mostly, it was boring.

[Annisha Borah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I certainly wouldn’t say this book is boring, like I was interested enough to finish it, but I didn’t think it was a good book. I can’t understand the perspective or the point of view. The characters were so weird and random,, did not feel like real people.

[Matthew Harby Conforti · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/ Totally in my suburban domestic literary fiction sweet spot. I enjoyed each character's voice and section and the astute psychology of their actions vs. their stakes. I probably enjoyed Gideon's section the least, and didn't really need the section of Scott's in Berin; but overall well plotted and funny. Totally reminded me of Franzen's Freedom in many ways. Ridker has a keen eye on suburban Boston upper middle class secular Jewish life and both celebrates and skewers it well. The novel also captured the time period (2013/2014) well.

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hope. I went in blindfolded on this novel and I’m so glad I did.
Family sagas are one of my favorite storyline. The four family members of the Greenspan clan each have a 100-page section devoted to a change in their lives: Scott, father, his physician practice is fraught after he’s caught falsifying blood samples for profit; Deb, mom, leaves her husband for a woman; the daughter, Maya, is fired from her publishing job; and turns down her boyfriends proposal, Gideon, the son, travels to Syria after a random burst of inspiration and drops out of medical school.

The novel’s plot bloomed like an onion and kept me guessing what direction lay ahead. Ridker dissects each member’s existence into a granular life choice saga that, even at 432 pages, never felt sluggish. I adored this and the writing style, humor, and steady prose. Highly recommend this novel if you also enjoy family dynamics.
Open ended ending which bumped this from 5 stars to 4.5 for me.

[Maria de Kruijf · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘De reden dat ze van boeken hield: om andere levens dan het hare te kunnen leiden.’

Een heerlijk boek zich afspeelt in Boston, NY, Cape Cod, Israël en Syrië. Tussen Safran Foer en Franzen in. Een familiegeschiedenis van nu, om helemaal in onder te duiken.

[Mag · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chroniques d’une famille juive américaine, dans laquelle chaque membre de celle-ci essaye de se réaliser en tant qu’individu à part entière, et dans sa solitude.
Juste, drôle, on se croirait parfois dans un film de Woody Allen.
Grand roman contemporain. Adoré malgré quelques longueurs.

[Remi Work · Rating 2 out of 5]

i didnt like that at all

[Ruby Siegel · Rating 3 out of 5]

started strong then i really got bored. skipped a chapter at the end and skimmed the last chapter just to finish

[kvanwoert · Rating 3 out of 5]

random pick but really good but also trying to stop giving everything 4 stars 🫣

[Dodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this story about a dysfunctional Jewish family making bad choices. Maybe I would give it 3.5 stars if that was possible. I admired the author's descriptive writing and character development, and that's what kept me reading.

[Sam R · Rating 4 out of 5]

honest and, at times, humorous depiction of obama-era, liberal, upper-middle class restlessness. a heartfelt story about loneliness, yearning, becoming, and what it is that we owe one another.

the structure of the novel sometimes made the timeline confusing, but i enjoyed that each chapter was from the pov of a different family member. deft and earnest prose.

[Erna Wiering · Rating 2 out of 5]

Het verhaal begint veelbelovend, maar die belofte wordt niet waargemaakt. De hoofdpersonen nemen ingrijpende beslissingen, zonder dat voor mij als lezer duidelijk wordt waarom ze die keuze maken. De ergernis die dat oproept, in combinatie met de losse eindjes, maken dit boek voor mij een teleurstelling.

[Natalie Hoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not really sure how I found this book, but I enjoyed reading about a family in Brookline, and the story captured parts of Boston’s culture very well. It also made me laugh. Ultimately 3 stars because it’s organized into 4 parts, each about a different family member - the first one was super interesting but each one after was slightly worse/oddly far fetched.

[Pia]

A cliché or a commentary about clichés?
Still, I enjoyed reading it, even though I found the last quarter of the novel frustrating.