The Woman Next Door
A Novel
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4.3 • 26 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The U.S. debut of award-winning writer Yewande Omotoso, in which an unexpected friendship blossoms in contemporary Cape Town—and in a community where loving thy neighbor is easier said than done.
Hortensia James and Marion Agostino are neighbors. One is black, the other white. Both are successful women with impressive careers. Both have recently been widowed, and are living with questions, disappointments, and secrets that have brought them shame. And each has something that the woman next door deeply desires.
Sworn enemies, the two share a hedge and a deliberate hostility, which they maintain with a zeal that belies their age. But, one day, an unexpected event forces Hortensia and Marion together. As the physical barriers between them collapse, their bickering gradually softens into conversation and, gradually, the two discover common ground. But are these sparks of connection enough to ignite a friendship, or is it too late to expect these women to change?
A finalist for: International DUBLIN Literary Award • Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction • Barry Ronge Fiction Prize • Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize • University of Johannesburg Main Prize for South African Writing
Longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction • One of the Best Black Heritage Reads (Essence Magazine) • One of NPR's Best Books of the Year • One of Publishers Weekly's Writers to Watch
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
There's an art to making you care deeply about the lives of fictional people, especially when those people aren’t particularly nice. Johannesburg-based novelist Yewande Omotoso is brilliant at it, writing with crisp, wit, and impressive authenticity. The Woman Next Door is a story of two octogenarian neighbors—one white, one black—who can’t stand each other. Omotoso invites us into the prickly women’s private worlds, rewarding us with the gift of empathy. We come to see Hortensia and Marion as complicated, fascinating individuals reckoning with their life choices and unexamined prejudices.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
South African Omotoso makes her U.S. debut with this charming, touching, occasionally radiant tale of two prickly octogenarians: two women, one black and one white, neighbors who discover after 20 years of exchanging digs and insults that they might help each other. Eighty-five-year-old Barbados-born textile designer Hortensia James occupies number 10 in the small upscale Cape Town community of Katterijn. In 1994, when Hortensia and her white husband purchased the house, she became Katterijn's first black homeowner. Now, 20 years later, she's a widow who excels at cutting remarks, many aimed at the widow next door, 81-year-old Marion Agostino, self-appointed community leader and number 10's architect. Their mutual animosity is well established until a repair project leaves Hortensia with a broken leg and Marion in need of temporary housing. Seeing an opportunity to avoid home nurses (whom Hortensia detests even more than she detests Marion), Hortensia invites Marion to move in with her. These creative women then create their own kind of crotchety companionship as Hortensia meets her late husband's daughter and the descendants of slaves that once occupied her land, while Marion confronts her failures as a mother, employer, and white woman under Apartheid. Omotoso captures the changing racial relations since the 1950s, as well as the immigrant experience through personal detail and small psychological insights into mixed emotions, the artist's eye, and widow's remorse. Hers is a fresh voice as adept at evoking the peace of walking up a kopje as the cruelty of South Africa's past.
