Hope

Rhian Ivory’s debut The Boy Who Drew the Future was a tense, atmospheric thriller, partly set in the seventeenth century. Her new novel Hope is thoroughly contemporary though with equally high levels of drama and tension.

Hope has lots to deal with: she and her mother are grieving for her father, who died suddenly and unexpectedly while the three of them were visiting his family in Italy; she’s desperate to train as an actor but as the book opens, has just flunked an audition for drama school; and, though this is something we – and she – only discover later, she is suffering from PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder). This condition heightens her sense of despair and helplessness, causing her moments of terrifying, irrational rage against herself as well as her friends. No wonder she feels that she has no future, not even a plan B now that her dreams of drama school seem finished.

Help comes in different forms. Travelling back from her disastrous audition Hope meets a boy on the ferry. Riley is good looking, funny and with a sharp sense of humour. He starts texting and emailing after they both get home and their sparky, genuinely witty conversations provide some of the book’s liveliest moments. Forced by her mother to take part in a Singing Medicine scheme at her local hospital, Hope finds that despite her initial resistance, she is able to help the sick children and adolescents she sings for. It’s at the hospital too that she discovers more about her PMDD, not from a doctor, but from a fellow volunteer; talking gives her the confidence to visit her GP. The final pillar in her support network is her beloved Italian grandfather Nonno, who proves that far from being stuck at a dead end, there are lots of opportunities open to her.

Ivory manages all these different themes slickly and with skill, balancing Hope’s genuine misery with a sense of ordinary teen life, and always emphasising the importance of friendship. Hope’s relationship with her best friend Callie is particularly well-observed, and there are some very moving moments with her mother too. Readers will understand how deeply her mother cares for Hope, even at those times when she is struggling to understand her daughter.

The story ends on a positive note with Hope looking forward to a new start and new course, and the final scene reunites her with Riley, who has sorted out his own problems too.

Read our Q&A interview with Rhian Ivory.