The Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn
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Buy *The Woman in the Window* by A.J. Finnonline

The Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn
William Morrow
Hardcover
448 pages
January 2018
rated 4 of 5 possible stars

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Click here to read reviewer Luan Gaines's take on The The Woman in the Window.

Who knows what goes on in a family? Submerged in the fears of Hitchcock's The Rear Window, Dr. Anna Fox lives alone in her four-story house in Lenox Hill. In the first blank months after her husband and daughter, Ed and Olivia, left, Anna can scarcely prize herself from the bed sheets. She spends her days staring at the ceiling, powerless to intervene as she watches her life surge forward. While rummaging through her medicine cabinet, Anna thinks of her new neighbors, Alistair and Jane Russell, and their fifteen-year-old son, Ethan. Although she's only seen Ethan once, Alistair is on permanent display, occasionally glancing into the bedroom as though in search of someone. She sees Jane with her family and her locket with Ethan's picture as she peers through the window at number 207.

In an effort to assuage her constant panic attacks, Anna logs into a chat room for fellow agoraphobes. Elderly widow Lizzie is the first to snag Anna's heart. Anna admits to Lizzie that she drinks too much wine and swallows too many pills. Before she sees the pill canister, the pawns, the queens, and the steamy letters bleeding down the glass, vanishing before her eyes, Anna's visions play out like a scene from Body Double or Blow Up (a showreel archive footage from a hundred peeping-Tom thrillers). She sees a killer without a victim and an empty sitting room with a vacant sofa: "I saw what I wanted to see what I needed to see."

When the police detectives refuse to believe her, Anna resorts to standing at her window, scanning the dark house across the park for signs of life. She thinks about her memories of Ed and Olivia, something that might unlock a sign or a clue. Anna descends into a dreamy unreality as her home breathes around her. From the steady tick and faint pulse of the grandfather clock, Anna is in the shadows, a blur of shades: "I see myself--my phantom self--reflected in the television screen." As she drowns in powerful psychotropics, something dangerous and new is happening to Anna. Anna writes Jane Russell's name across the floor; she is concerned for her neighbor and for vulnerable Ethan who knocks on Anna's door, pleading with a mix of sadness and fear.

A mysterious, damaged woman with a plethora of secrets, trapped in her own nightmare: Finn attempts to peels back the core of Anna's past, quickly moving her in a direction that leads to her eventual and predictable fate. It's not just the panic attacks, the freaking out, the pill-popping, and the drinking that cause Anna's unraveling, but also her ability to step into dangerously foolish situations. Throughout it all, Anna is never quite sure whom she can trust.

The Woman in the Window is made more intense by the limited venue--the action barely leaves Anna's home. The insertion of a violent storm at the end for dramatic effect comes across as cliché. Anna can't control her urge to play detective as she tries to discover the whereabouts of Jane Russell. From the novel's themes of isolation and crime to voyeurism and immersion in the clockwork grind of daily life, from a singular perspective, Anna shows us what it's like to become the target of a murderer.



Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Michael Leonard, 2018

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