“Watching is like nature photography: You don’t interfere with the wildlife.”
(This blog post doesn’t contain any important spoilers.)
I read The Woman in the Window in Spanish because I’m working on improving it. It was strangely easy to read, so I can only imagine that the language isn’t too complicated in the original either, which is why this is a great book for language learners or for a holiday.
What The Woman in the Window is about
The Woman in the Window (or La mujer en la ventana as I refer to it now) is a thriller novel by the American writer and editor Dan Mallory, who writes under the pen name A. J. Finn, published in 2018. Dr Anna Fox, a child psychologist suffering from severe agoraphobia, narrates the story. Anna spends her days in her New York apartment, gulping down medicine with large quantities of red wine, watching old classic movies and playing online chess. She only ever sees her psychiatrist and her physical therapist and she only ever talks to her estranged husband and daughter on the phone. That’s until the Russell family move into the house opposite hers. Anna is particularly interested in her new neighbours and observes them through her camera. She even befriends the youngest Russell, Ethan, and his mother, Jane. One day, she sees Jane’s murder through her window.
Anna calls the police, but nobody seems to believe her. There’s no dead body, no evidence and Jane Russell seems to be alive and well. Except that she’s not the woman with whom Anna spent an evening chatting. The police dismiss Anna’s accusation and believe the husband and father, Alistair Russell. Strange things keep happening, Anna continues to see Ethan, believing that he’s the victim of a violent father. At some point, she thinks she might really be hallucinating, which is a possible side effect of the medicine and alcohol.
The Woman in the Window is a page-turner
The reader sees the world through Anna’s eyes which makes them just as confused about the situation as she is. And then Anna turns out to be an unreliable narrator, which, however, doesn’t mean that she isn’t a victim too. The novel has two powerful twists that are placed in the second half of the story. The events that lead to the first twist are interesting enough that it doesn’t drag on at all. The second big revelation is naturally saved for the end of the book.
I personally found the plot exciting and interesting, while Anna as the main character was funny, despite all her misery, and easy to empathise with. For someone in such a devastating situation, she is capable of a lot of sarcastic and witty observations. Perhaps that’s what’s saving her. Still, I found the otherwise satisfactory ending slightly miserable. I would like to think that things would be good for Anna again someday, but this might be too optimistic considering everything that’s happened to her.
I recommend the book to anyone who’s into stories that suck you in so much that you go to bed (too) late every evening. There’s also a TV adaptation of this book, but I haven’t watched it yet. Have you? What did you think?
