Well hello there. I'm Beth. Today we're going to talk about The Woman in the Window
by AJ Finn.
Thanks for watching today, guys! I am really excited to talk
to you about the latest hot book, The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn. It seems
like everybody in book land is reading this and so I'm really excited to add my
voice to the many who are loving this book. I'll say to begin with that I do
give this five stars because it's just so good. Let me back up a little bit and
give you a synopsis of the plot. It centers around a woman named Anna.
She's agoraphobic. She's been shut in for around 10 months within her house.
She tries in vain to step foot outside, but every time she does she gets a panic
attack and passes out cold. So she just can't leave. We know that there has been
some trauma in her past. It's hinted to, but what that trauma is
and the nature of it is kind of slowly leaked out through the book. It is
definitely part of the story. Definitely part of the suspense. Now, during her day,
Anna does several different things like play chess online with her friends,
online friends. She'll visit an agoraphobic support group online and
lend her support to others because ironically she is a psychologist. And she
will drink a lot. A. Lot. A lot a lot. She'll have a drink for breakfast,
a drink for lunch, many many drinks for dinner, and then
pass out while watching a black-and-white suspense movie, which is
her favorite way to end the day. Now the combination of all the alcohol she takes
in and all of the anti-psychotic medication that she's on due to her
agoraphobic condition means that she is subject to hallucinations, to blacking
out. She is definitely an unreliable witness
and unreliable narrator, for it is through her eyes that we see this story
unfold. And so much like the unreliability of her own psyche, we can't
trust as readers what's going on, what's being recounted
to us. It's a really interesting spin. One of her other favorite pastimes during
the day is to watch her neighbors through her upstairs windows.
She'll tote out her camera with a zoom lens and watch them and sometimes
take pictures. She gets new neighbors across the street who she immediately
recognizes as being not quite on the up-and-up. There's something going on
with the teenage son. He seems traumatized about the move.There's
something going on with a control freak dad who seems to have violent outbursts.
And there's definitely something strange going on with the mom. She was full of,
just, such vim, vigor, and sort of ...
Oh, what's the word when you're not conventional?
Unconventional.
Sort of an unconventional approach to relationships
with people. It's really interesting. One night while she's doing her nightly
stalker duty watching her neighbors out the window, she thinks she sees a
murder happen. Merrrderrr!
It is much like Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, and in
fact, much of the book is very much Hitchcockian with these winking
references to the old black-and-white movies that she watches like Rear Window,
or Gaslight. I think she also watches Rebecca, one of my favorite books I like
to talk about on my channel. So since she's on this potent mix of meds and
alcohol and she's obviously suffering from acute trauma, we don't know for sure
if we can trust what she has seen. Did it actually happen? And if it did, whodunnit?
She saw what was done, perhaps, but she didn't see who did it.
And so unfolds a real potboiler of a plot. It's fascinating to see stuff
unfold. We see her psyche get even more and more damaged as the story goes on.
We also see her backstory unfold as the story goes on, and we get to see the
trauma that led to where she is.
And then, a twist.
A really good twist. A really,
really good twist. Now, I've talked before on this channel about twists that are
kind of done for twists' sake. They're not really dynamic. They seem almost cheap
and trying too hard to make the book more exciting.
That is not the case here. That is not the case here!
The twist in Woman in the
Window is done masterfully. It really shakes me off my feet or whatever sort
of mixed metaphor you want to throw in there for that, and really changes the
whole, the whole feel of the story. I'm not going to say what it is. I'm not even
going to say what emotion I felt when I got to the shocking twist because I
don't want to give any of it away. Don't want to give it away. I want you to
discover it yourself, and all of the twisty joy that comes with it. Now the
one downfall to the Woman in the Window is that it does have a bit of a
Scooby-Doo climax. That is a literary term that I have made up.
It's one in which the
evildoer is caught out at the end of the story at the climax of the story and
they say, "Yes, I did it! And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you
meddling kids!" and then proceeds to describe in great detail. Not that
there's anything really heart-pounding going on at the same time!
...describes in
great detail exactly what they did, how they pulled off whatever heist it was
they were doing, and all of the different red herrings that were thrown in. It's
almost cheating. It's almost cheating.
And I hate to say that because I loved this
book so much, and I'm not exactly sure how the author could have changed things
or resolved the story with all of our answers being questioned ... questions being
answered differently. All I can say is that anytime I come across a Scooby Doo
climax, it kind of, it's ... it's a little too pat. It's a little too cut and dry. It's a
little too neatly tied up with a neat little ribbon with a pretty little bow
on top, which maybe, maybe this didn't really deserve a pretty little bow on top.
But still very good! It's, it's a weird dichotomy that feeling of being a
little bit unsatisfied with how things were wrapped up. It's still being very
satisfied with the end so a little bit conflicted on that, but five stars. Now, I
mentioned the winking references to the old black and white suspense movies in
this book. So in that spirit, I am going to take it
to the next step and also suggest three black-and-white suspense movies that I
think that you might be interested in as well. I don't think that these were
movies that were mentioned in the book itself, so consider these extras on top
of the wonderful watching list that you will pick up just from reading the woman
in the window. Number one is Diabolique. I hope I
pronounced that right. It's a French film. Maybe it's Diabolique.
It was made in the 1950s. In it, there is a school headmaster and he has two women
he has treated badly. One is his wife. The other is his mistress. The two women team
up to try and get revenge against him. Deadly revenge. It's diabolical. There are
lots of twists and turns and shocks and thrills and spills ... of blood. It's a
really good movie that I highly recommend. Another one this is another
French film. I promise I'm not going to just recommend French films, but I'm
trying to recommend ones that weren't mentioned in The Woman in the Window or
ones that are necessarily Hitchcock, because you already know you need to go
seek out all of the Hitchcock movies, even though they're a little bit
problematic in this #metoo era. It's still important to watch them because
they're still good movies. That's a whole other discussion. A whole other
discussion. But the next movie is another French one that was made in the 1960s
called Eyes Without a Face. Oh, man. this movie is kind of dreamy while being
terrifying at the same time. It involves a mad scientist. There was a horrible, I
think it was a car accident that disfigured his beautiful daughter's face
years ago. And so since then, he has been getting faces by nefarious means to
try and graft a new face on to his poor daughter's disfigured one. Now, as this
occurs, she becomes more and more unhinged because she has all these faces
that she's trying to trying to wear and so it's just,
oh my goodness really interesting. And then when she's not re-faced, she wears
this mask, like a almost like a Michael Myers hockey mask, that takes away all
the features. It leaves her eyes there and it's - it's just so creepy! Creepy,
atmospheric, quietly terrifying. Eyes Without a Face. You should watch that.
This last one is probably one of my favorite movies of all time. It is called
Freaks. It was made in the 1930s by Tod Browning. It's a movie that could never
be made today, with good reason because it features actual circus freaks. And I
feel almost bad calling them that, because it's people with actual
disabilities and disfigurements and conditions that, you know, they're part of
this traveling circus show. These people in the movie are all very successful/
They have created their own sort of family within themselves. In fact, when
one of them gets married, they have this little wedding feast in celebration
where they all get together around a big table and chant, "we accept you, we accept
you, one of us, one of us, gooble gobble."
Sometimes I'll bust out with that chant
randomly and nobody knows what I'm talking about,
which makes me all the more weird. So, there's this beautiful trapeze artist
who manages to infiltrate this little insular family of the traveling circus
troupe and she definitely has bad things up her sleeve. She just wants to make off
with one of the people's, one of the person's money. She wants to marry him,
take off with the money, and run off with her handsome boyfriend. She's cruel.
She's mean. She makes fun of all of these people and you come to really feel for
them and come to realize the real freaks are not them. The real freaks are the
outsiders who are being mean and cruel to these people and looking at them as
if they're a bunch of circus freaks. They're not. They're a family and they're
just ... they're so lovable. We get to see the cruelty that she
brings against her husband who is a little person and then the cruelty she
brings to all of the people in the troupe. She she really treats them horribly. And
then we get to see what happens when they band together and fight back.
Oh, it's so good! It's so good. I highly recommend it. One of my all-time favorite
movies. Freaks. Okay, that's all I've got today. Three good movies one really good
book. I'd love to know what you thought of it if you read it.
Let me know in the comments and I will catch you guys next time.
Thank you so much for watching. Bye!
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