The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

I am currently writing a trilogy of books whose genre might be described as suspense fiction. I have also tried to ‘find my voice’ and develop a style that I and hopefully future readers might find both attractive and then compelling.

The Woman in the Window provides a template for this on both counts. I absolutely loved the plot and writing style and hope that one day my own words might tell a story that comes somewhere close to this.

It concerns a children’s psychologist called Anna who suffers from an anxiety disorder herself, namely agoraphobia. She hasn’t left her New York apartment for some 10 months and spends her time either online advising others with ‘disorders’ or playing virtual chess. She spends her time observing her neighbours and we are drawn into their worlds with her. We assume that Anna is the woman in the window until it becomes clear that she isn’t.

Thanks to the Russell family who move in across the road from Anna we become embroiled in a drama that Anna may or may not have imagined, along with a back story that leads back to the source of Anna’s illness. I found the way that the plot unfolds absolutely masterful, perfectly paced, with a truly gripping, unseen climax to it.

What I particularly enjoyed was the backdrop of suspense films – especially those of Alfred Hitchcock – such that, by the end, we are hearing lines from characters that may have come from the TV or from Anna’s subconsciousness. I felt as though, rather than looking through a window into her world, I had become a character in the story itself, staring out of the screen, judging my reaction to the next plot twist.

Overall, I found the quality of writing outstanding and literally ingested every word and phrase.

The book has drawn mixed reviews, which I always find intriguing, and one of the regular criticisms is that characters are too one-dimensional. I think that this totally misses the point in that Anna is not seeing two-dimensional, rounded people anymore than she can put any fat on the virtual personas of those she ‘converses’ with online. This is the nature of her condition and I note that the author has himself struggled with depression and his mental health amid various controversial episodes. He has certainly used that experience to explore that overwhelming feeling of isolation and, hopefully, it has helped him to find a way out of it.

I probably won’t watch the film version on Netflix because Anna and her environment are both so perfectly formed in my imagination: quite an achievement for any writer, I imagine.
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I strongly recommend this book to any reader who enjoys having the psychological norms of ‘self’ challenged.

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