I’m a big fan of pulse-pounding thrillers that gradually unveil horrifying secrets about strange situations the protagonists encounter…and eventually, the protagonists themselves. During covid, in particular, I’ve been seeking out reads like these; with all the time I have indoors, it’s nice to have a shocking scenario or two to break up the monotony in my daily routine. Because A.J. Finn’s debut thriller is so highly-recommended by Gillian Flynn (who wrote both Gone Girl AND a less-advertised thriller called Sharp Objects, both of which you should definitely read), I figured that I would give it a go. Of course, I am going to do the best I can to write a review of this book without spoiling anything, because I am all too familiar with chatty online reviews that tell you what the plot twists are before you’ve even read the first paragraph.
The protagonist, Anna Fox, stirred equal parts pity, discomfort, and appreciation within me. As an agoraphobe with a binge-drinking and over-medication problem, her life is a pathetic blur of the same self-destructive routines, punctuated occasionally by glimpses out of a particular window in her house that grants her a view of several different neighbors. Just as Anna’s confinement indoors is broken only by these “espionage adventures” wherein she takes her camera and photographs her neighbors’ whereabouts, the racing thoughts within her head are broken only by her conversations with her husband, Ed, and her daughter, Olivia. I appreciated that Finn paired the dichotomy between Anna’s familiar home and the terrifying outside world with the dichotomy between Anna’s usual lonely conversations with herself and her loving conversations with her family. Both of these dichotomies gradually collapse as the novel continues and readers become less and less certain of Anna’s reliability.
“I step into the hall—the one area of the house I dislike and distrust, the cool gray zone between my realm and the outside world. Right now it’s dim in the dusk, the dark walls like hands about to clap me between them.”
p. 51
Because she struggles with a debilitating mental illness and profound loneliness, Anna is a very complex character; I am quite impressed with Finn’s ability to weave a compelling and terrifying narrative despite the fact that Anna, her house, and her thoughts comprise most of the text. She has a sharp sense of humor that contrasts with her languid demeanor—I particularly chuckled at her commentaries on wine and the black-and-white movies she adores. Readers also come to find out that funny enough, she is a psychologist struggling with a mental illness, and she currently channels her professional powers that were once spent helping children into an online community of agoraphobes titled “The Agora.” Despite her flaws, it is challenging not to find Anna to be somewhat likeable a few pages in. From the happy memories she recounts with her family to the tremendous effort she puts into counseling a patient, “GrannyLizzie,” on The Agora, she demonstrates that she is still sharp, thoughtful, and considerate despite being shut away from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, every aspect of her life that she finds solace in while she is battling her agoraphobia—family memories, black-and-white movies, and technology included—will ultimately be sucked into a horrifying nightmare as Anna copes with the trauma of seeing something awful occur in a neighbor’s house across the street and begins to face consequences for her housebound “snooping.” Ultimately, it becomes difficult not to question whether everything in Anna’s life is “real” or not.
“Again I see it: the bottles; the pill canisters; the pawns, the queens, the advancing two-tone armies—my hands reaching across the chessboard, hovering like helicopters. My fingers, stained with ink, a pen pinched between them. I’d practiced that signature, hadn’t I , scrawling her name on the shower door, amid the steam and the spray, the letters bleeding down the glass, vanishing before my eyes.”
p. 315
Some readers might be turned off by the repetition in Anna’s routine—there is an awful lot of wine-spilling, game-playing, and droning movies in the background. My personal opinion is that these repetitions exist to make readers so “comfortable” with them that the later disruptions to Anna’s life are all the more shocking. In other words, Anna’s monotonous days and drowsy cycle of thoughts form a backdrop against which Finn throws the horrors and psychological twists. If you’re struggling to maintain interest in Anna within the first few pages, my advice is to keep reading—eventually, you’ll probably want the monotony back!
‘The final scene of Rope plays on the television…”Cat and Mouse, cat and mouse,’ fumes Farley Granger, the net drawing tight around him, ‘but which is the cat and which is the mouse?’ I say the words out loud.”
p. 341
There are a couple of “bombs” that drop in this story when Anna realizes that her entire identity, her knowledge of her neighbors, and her family relationships are not what she initially thought them to be. To me, Anna’s real family situation, which emerges before the “climax” at the end, is even more heartbreaking and earth-shattering than the climax itself. I really respect Finn for “destroying” his protagonist’s worldview before the truth about the family living across the street even comes out. It feels as though there is no more reason to continue reading because Anna’s situation has hit rock bottom, but readers are compelled to stick with her nonetheless, and the reward is a final twist that I’ll just say leaves a lot of doubt about whether Anna should ever have let anyone into her house…and into her online sphere.
The bottom line is that I found this book to be very absorbing, and I got through all of it in just a few days. If you’re looking for something to make you head outside and be thankful for fresh air, reading The Woman in the Window is the perfect way to drive you out of the confines of your home!
