Hortensia James and Marion Agostino - frenemies and friends in-the-making, both in their 80s, one white, one of coulour. One cranky, one uppity. Yet, both are women with their stories, their pains, joys and pasts. And they can be there for each other.

While this novel has never grabbed me fully (maybe there is too much bitterness for that?), there are many tidbits of human stories, or more exactly female stories, whom I find quite realistic and some has touched me with their civilly written, yet well-perceived truth.
For the most length of the novel the plot was quite negative-sounding towards men (which I do not like as this is simply not realistic for the all men to be just behaving badly) - luckily, at the end there is some saving grace present.
All in all, this is quite good for the female friendship literature collection.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/art-matters-when-books-can-save-your-life_us_59a95ba2e4b0d0c16bb52451

✪ Stories centering around acerbic women of a certain age are as infrequent as they are often cantankerous delights. (See: Brian Morton’s Florence Gordon.) Race, money and the indignities of age enliven a tale of hostility and unlikely connection in The Woman Next Door, a prickly and engrossing novel from gifted Barbados-born South Africa-bred novelist Yewande Omotoso.

The writing is marvellous, the characters are well formed, interesting,flawed - wonderfully human. Fiction at its best..

Since I never finished this book I will not write a review as it's not fair to the author, there could be a knock out ending that I never got to!

Thanks again for the opportunity

This is a lovely story of two neighbors. These women do not see eye-to-eye, until they do. Living life in close proximity with someone, especially someone you disagree with, means seeing the rough edges of that person. I really enjoyed the characters and would recommend this to readers of A Man Called Over and similar stories.

I did not finish this book as I did not engage with it at all.

It was so easy to rate this book with a full 5 stars. On the surface this is a story about one white woman and one black woman who are neighbors that hate each other. However, there is so much more to the story. Omostoso deals with issues of bigotry, regrets, aging, morality to just name a few. There are so many 'pearls of wisdom" and therefore, so much to br gained by reading this book. I can not wait to read more novels by Yewande Omotoso.

The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso is described as being about two women: one black and one white. For me this book was more about two women and the choices that led them to where they are. Race played a role definitely in the story, but saying that is what the book is about sells it short. Hortensia and Marion are both older and are bitter enemies. The reasons for their attitudes become clear as each individually tells her story. They are brought together by life circumstances. This is a wonderful novel. I found myself picking it up every time I had a spare minute. It deals with race, growing older, choices, and attitudes. While the topics are weighty, the book is very enjoyable.

The woman next door is an aging intractable widow not unlike her neighbor, though they claim to be polar opposites. In fact, they are willfully contrary. Residents of an exclusive Cape Town suburb, Marion and Hortensia are both haughty design professionals, they are both widowed, they are both tormented by secrets that their husbands left behind, but Marion is white and a mother whereas Hortensia is black and childless. These two themes of race and motherhood in post-apartheid South Africa play out as the women slowly and grudgingly become companions and erstwhile friends. Omotoso has fully realized these two women in the last chapter of their lives who are just now contemplating the possibility of revision. The barbs the women aim at each other scratch beneath the surface of what it means to own who we have become.