The Woman in the Window (novel)

The Woman in the Window (novel)
The Woman in the Window is an acclaimed thriller novel by American author A.J. Finn, published by William Morrow on January 2, 2018. The novel has been translated into more than 40 languages, and has sold over 5 million copies worldwide. It hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The book follows the life of Dr. Anna Fox who suffers from agoraphobia and lives a reclusive life at her large home in New York City, where she one day witnesses a murder across the street. The book was praised for its suspenseful plot and its perceptive exploration of isolation, mental illness, trauma, and resilience. A successful film adaptation directed by Joe Wright and starring Amy Adams in the title role was released by Netflix in 2021.
Plot
Dr. Anna Fox suffers from agoraphobia due to a traumatic car accident and lives a reclusive life at her large home in New York City. She recently separated from her husband, Ed, who has custody of their nine-year-old daughter Olivia. However, they frequently talk on the phone.
To pass the time, Anna spends her days drinking too much alcohol, playing online chess, communicating with other recluses through the "Agora online forum," watching old movies, and meeting with her shrink and physical therapist. She also spends time spying on her neighbors, including the Russells, a family that moved in across the street. There is Ethan, the reserved and polite teenage son; Alistair, the controlling father; and Jane, a friendly woman with whom Anna shares many interests. One evening, while looking out the window, Anna witnesses Jane being stabbed and calls the police. The Russells deny that any sort of attack took place. The police, including detectives Little and Norelli, also don't believe Anna's story as another woman who claims to be Jane is alive and uninjured. Anna insists the woman claiming to be Jane is not the same woman she met before.
Anna has a number of encounters with the Russells and becomes convinced that something is suspicious about them. After she receives an anonymous email with a picture of herself sleeping, she calls the police. A detective confronts her with the tragic truth: Her husband and daughter died in the car accident that triggered her agoraphobia, and she has been imagining her conversations with them. Knowing her medications can cause hallucinations, they theorize that Anna could have taken the picture and emailed it to herself. Anna realizes that the murder may have been a hallucination as well.
Anna finds a picture she had taken of the Jane she met and shows it to Ethan. He breaks down and tells her the truth: Jane and Alistair are his adoptive parents, and Katie, the woman Anna assumed was Jane, is his biological mother. Katie tracked down the family in order to see her son again, but her frequent unwanted visits led to an altercation with Jane, which resulted in Katie being stabbed. Alistair and Jane hid the body and lied to the police.
Anna urges Ethan to talk to the police, but he convinces her that he will talk his parents into turning themselves in. Ethan later sends a text confirming he and his parents are going to the police. That night, Anna realizes that Ethan mentioned something that he couldn't have known. She is startled by Ethan in her room, where he confesses that he has psychopathic tendencies, that he has been sneaking into her home at night to watch her, and that he has stalked other women as well. He reveals that he was the one who killed Katie because of his resentment about the abuse and neglect he faced as a child under her care, and that his father knew, but kept it a secret to protect Jane.
Realizing that he intends to kill her too, Anna flees. He pursues her to the roof where she pushes him through an old skylight to his death. Alistair is arrested as an accessory to Katie's murder, and Anna slowly starts her life over again.
Characters
Anna Fox, a reclusive 39-year-old woman who suffers from severe agoraphobia and anxiety
Ed Fox, Anna's husband, who died the previous year in a car accident where Anna was driving
Olivia Fox, Anna's 9-year-old daughter who also died
Ethan Russell, the shy and polite teenage son who lives across the park and becomes friends with Anna
Jane Russell, Ethan's mother and Alastair's wife, who Anna believed she saw murdered
Alistair Russell, an intimidating man who Anna believes stabbed and killed Jane
David Winters, Anna's tenant who lives in the basement of her large home and frequently does house work for the neighborhood
Dr. Julian Fielding, Anna's therapist who visits her once a week
Bina, Anna's physical therapist who works on helping her recover from the car accident
Reception
The novel was a commercial and critical success. It stayed at number one for two weeks on the New York Times best sellers list. Book Marks reported that 38% of critics gave the book a "rave" review, and another 38% of the critics expressed "positive" impressions, based on a sample of 13 reviews.
In a review in the New Yorker, Joyce Carrol Oates called it "superior" and "highly successful." A review in the New York Times said, "A book that’s as devious as this novel will delight anyone who’s been disappointed too often... For hard-core aficionados of classic logical mysteries, this book includes some special delights." Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Crackling with tension, and the sound of pages turning, as twist after twist sweeps away each hypothesis you come up with about what happened in Anna’s past and what fresh hell is unfolding now."
The book was shortlisted for the 2019 British Book Awards in the "Crime & Thriller" category.
Influences
A.J. Finn has cited genre classics such as Rear Window, Gas Light, and Gone Girl as inspirations for The Woman in the Window. According to IMDB, the plot of the Woman in the Window references 52 movie classics.
Film adaptation
A Netflix film based on the novel directed by Joe Wright, with a screenplay by Tracy Letts and starring Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Fred Hechinger, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Julianne Moore was released on May 14, 2021. Time called the movie a "coolly tasteful psychological thriller." GQ praised it as “a camp masterpiece” with “avant garde-ish flair.” The Hollywood Reporter described it as a “neo-Gothic diversion with a strong central performance” whose “homebound protagonist has become that much more understandable to audiences.” The film was among the best performing titles on Netflix in 2021.
Plot similarities
A 2019 article in the New York Times investigated and dismissed plagiarism rumors stemming from plot similarities between The Woman in the Window and another book in the same genre, Sarah A. Denzil’s Saving April. The Times reviewed original outlines of The Woman in the Window and concluded that the similar plot points "were all included in outlines for The Woman in the Window . . . in the fall of 2015, before Ms Denzil began writing Saving April.” The Times noted that the Woman in the Window plot outlines it reviewed were dated September 20, 2015 and October 4, 2015, and that Sarah Denzil did not begin writing Saving April until October 2015. The Times also reported that Mallory had started writing The Woman in the Window in the summer of 2015. In an interview with the trade publication Publishers Lunch, Sarah Denzil explained that she previewed a brief excerpt from Saving April in Kindle Scout in mid-December 2015 and that "March 2016 would have been the earliest point that anyone, aside from me, the Kindle Press team and the copy editor at Kindle Press, would have read the book in its entirety."
The Washington Post also found that “there’s no real suggestion of plagiarism” in the case of The Woman in the Window. In a follow-up piece, the New York Times quoted Harvard copyright law expert Rebecca Tushnet who explained that there are many “well-worn tropes in thrillers,” and Stuart Karle of Columbia Journalism School who stated that “great fiction builds on prior works in terms of both language and sense of place.”
Bibliography
Finn, A. J. (January 2018). The Woman in the Window (First ed.). New York, NY: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 9780062678416. OCLC 1293226856.
References
2018 American novels
2018 debut novels
Agoraphobia in fiction
American novels adapted into films
American thriller novels
Fiction with unreliable narrators
First-person narrative novels
Novels set in New York City
William Morrow and Company books
Works published under a pseudonym