“The Woman Next Door” by Yewande Nomotoso

I like the premise of this book. Two women in their eighties, one black, one white, live next door to each other in Katterjin, an upscale community in modern day South Africa. Hortensia, who is black, despises Marion’s racism. Marion hates Hortensia because Hortensia hates her. Through a series of mishaps and coincidences, the two wind up moving in together and forming a relationship.

When my book club chose the book, I looked forward to it. But it was a struggle for me from the start.

I couldn’t distinguish Hortensia from Marion—both exhibited unrelenting rage and stubbornness and very little to make me care about them. The background information on both the women’s lives, though  it helped me understand what molded them, unfolded in ways that confused me. And, though I’m all for eliminating as many dialogue tags as possible, the long stretches of conversation between Marion and Hortensia were often not delivered clearly enough to know who was speaking, so I had to back up and figure it out. I was distracted so often and felt so disconnected from the characters, that I probably wouldn’t have finished the book if it hadn’t been a book club selection.

Interestingly enough, I rather liked the ending. And I did like the lack of sentimentality, though I would have welcomed more entrance into the two women’s psyches than the occasional reference to Marion’s shame or Hortensia’s loneliness. THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR didn’t work for me. It could have been so much more.

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