Donna's Reviews > The Woman Next Door

Hortensia James, 85, small with a bad leg, bitter and angry, waits for her husband to die, releasing her from sixty years in a wrecked marriage. She lives in Katyerijn, a housing colony in Cape Town Constantia in post-apartheid South Africa. She is the only black owner in the colony. Her next door neighbor is Marion Agostino, a recent widow facing financial ruin and her racism. She’s also an architect who designed the home Hortensia lives in, one she always coveted for herself, but could never purchase whenever it came up for sale. And now, Hortensia has decided to make some changes to that award winning floor plan which was Marion’s first project and the jewel in her career crown. What follows is the deconstruction and reconstruction of not just a house, but of a relationship between these two women who, though very different on the outside, may have more in common than they know.

I read this novel for my book club which often challenges me to sample books I’d never choose on my own, some of them to my liking and quite a few not. So when I first started reading this book which featured two very disagreeable main characters who seemed to care only about themselves, I was sure which category it would fall into. I groaned inwardly at the thought of having to endure them for an entire book which I predicted I’d never rate more than two stars. But something happened along the way. I didn’t exactly grow to like Hortensia and Marion, who at the beginning appalled me, but I became fascinated by them and their outrageousness, and enjoyed their prickly conversations, wanting to know how they came to be as they were and if they’d ever grow and change.

This isn’t a book to read for its historical elements on post-apartheid South Africa since it barely touched upon it. It’s more of a book about human nature and the nature of racism as the reader learns the history of these two women and what has brought them to their present state, individually and collectively, when they finally sit down and truly talk.

Hortensia left out stories of what she called ‘the freeze’. Hard stares from fellow students and lecturers alike; stares from people who looked through you, not at you; stares intent on disappearing you; and stares you fought by making yourself solid.

Marion had avoided history. Or she’d invented her own. After all, what was history but a record of what gets noticed? Noticing, it seemed to Marion, was what life was really about. Noticing and not noticing, remembering and forgetting.

“You say I’m a hypocrite. I have to be. I have to pretend it happened somewhere else; that I read it in a book. I would not be able to get out of bed otherwise.”

Surprisingly, there was much humor in this book, as well, and many insightful lines that made me stop and think. Here are some of the ones that stood out for me:

The medication took turns making Hortensia feel like a superhero and making her want to punch everyone. In other words, it had little effect on her.

Marion the Vulture was repairing her nest.

‘I don’t see him as black.’
‘Of course you don’t. That’s what makes you racist.’

Agnes’s face had always surprised Marion. Two eyes, a nose and mouth, yes, but the composure. Where does someone, especially without much money, buy that kind of peace? Life was much too glaring without the shade of lots of cash.

She tied a block of concrete to her ankle and let it drag her down. Hating, after all, was a drier form of drowning.

Conversation flapped about, looking for deep waters.

Was time here, she thought, in the room with them? Had time sat down for a short while?

Night was the real measure of love, Hortensia thought. Anything can sparkle in the daylight. But night –that was when humanity got tested.

Recommended for book clubs and anyone who enjoys unique characters and thought-provoking lines like those included in this review.