NIGHTSTANDS & COFFEE TABLES

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn | Review by Meredith McKinnie

“I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about.”

Finn’s psychological thriller takes readers into the educated, yet obsessive mind of Dr. Anna Fox suffering from agoraphobia, having not left her home for almost a year. She lives each day through the lens of a Nikon camera, watching the comings and goings of her neighbors, detailing their habits and heartbreaks alongside the classic movies she plays on repeat for company. Anna becomes particularly obsessed with the Russells who just moved in across the way, the seemingly ideal family with secrets exposed through Anna’s camera lens.

Chapters and sentences are brief, quickening the pace for the reader. The shortness of each day represented in each chapter showcases the emptiness of a recluse’s existence. Spiraling in a world of prescription medication and merlot, Anna struggles between the real and the imaginary, believing herself above the consequences of alcohol and medication. The reader must rely on an unreliable narrator and the scrutiny of those who enter her world. We want to trust the woman whose title gives her credibility. In describing her own disease, she says, “the sufferer seeks an environment she can control…Agoraphobia hasn’t ravaged my life so much as become it.” She doesn’t apologize for her condition or try to hide it, instead embracing it as part of her life. Her comfort with her condition makes the reader more at ease, and thus her version of events more acceptable.

A.J. Finn is a pen name for Dan Mallory. Written from a woman’s perspective, I was surprised to find out the author is a male, as he writes a woman’s story eloquently and as if he’s lived the life of one. Through her camera, Anna describes her neighbor, a “genuine redhead, with grass-green eyes and an archipelago of tiny moles trailing across her back.” The author uses terms for description I’ve rarely read, yet so accurately describes the vision that I feel as if I’m looking through Anna’s Nikon.

The backdrop of film noirs constantly on repeat, Anna will often justify her thoughts, responding to the characters in the movies, using quotes from scenes to justify her actions. Finn’s ability to weave the plot of the story through the dialogue of an Alfred Hitchcock film, then the words of Jimmy Stewart, enrich the narrative, layering the imaginary elements, building the case against his protagonist. Finn describes the novel as a coupling of, “psychological acuity with cracking narrative pace.” One chapter becomes twenty as Anna’s dark world comes into focus. An eeriness unsettles us as we delve into this woman’s condition and its circumstances.

The Woman in the Window is a major motion picture releasing October 4, starring Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, and Gary Oldman. This leaves us just enough time to digest the narrative before seeing its depiction on screen.