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by Yewande Omotoso
Loving they 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 pleasing tale of reconciliation laced with acid humor and a cheery avoidance of sentimentality." - Kirkus
"Omotoso's warm and witty story is more complex than a simple tale of black and white...Like Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, which also depicts the wisdom found in aging, this novel will have universal appeal." - Library Journal
"The vivid setting and intricate descriptions transport the reader to this very specific time and place, though the crackling dialog and lively, fiercely independent protagonists are universal." - Booklist
"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." - Publishers Weekly
"Cape Town's answer to Mapp and Lucia, a war of wits and witticisms amid the bougainvillea of an impossibly smug neighborhood. Yewande Omotoso's deft writing and subtle weaving in of difficult history will leave you in love with these two stubborn old women. Delightful." - Helen Simonson, New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Before the War and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
"At once historical and contemporary, The Woman Next Door is charged with beauty, precision, nuance, and hope. Yewande Omotoso is a stunning, essential voice." - NoViolet Bulawayo, author of We Need New Names
"Yewande Omotoso's voice is exciting and fresh. The aesthetic and political engagement in her work is explored through a deep compassion for her characters and their social positions and constraints, without compromising on a fierce yet tender interrogation of their inner lives: race, place and the social web of expectation versus the freedom of an inner life, a complexity of self that she works out through beautiful and uplifting language." - Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas and The Face: A Cartography of the Void
"Although new to the scene, Yewande Omotoso writes with the skill, intelligence, and compassion of an old master. One of the astonishing achievements of The Woman Next Door is her ability to see all sides of a story. Only such keenness of vision could produce this enlightening and eloquent novel that serves as a testament to a truth that we seldom hear: through honest exchange, it is possible for us to free ourselves from the terrible hauntings of history." - Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Song of the Shank and Rails Under My Back
"[The Woman Next Door] made me howl with laughter and it made me cry." - Biyi Bandele, author of The King's Rifle and director of Half of a Yellow Sun
This information about The Woman Next Door was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Yewande Omotoso was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria, moving to South Africa with her family in 1992. She is the author of Bom Boy, published in South Africa in 2011. In 2012, she won the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author and was shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize. In 2013, she was a finalist in the inaugural pan-African Etisalat Fiction Prize. She lives in Johannesburg, where she writes and has her own architectural practice.
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