What if the people we are to fear most aren’t faceless strangers we leer at from our windows but our own faint reflections staring back at us? Despite the fact that reports from RAINN state that regardless of gender, eight out of ten rapes are committed by someone familiar with the victim, when we think about the faceless strangers that women are socialized to fear most-strangers in dark alleyways, strangers in bars, strangers in general-how can we possibly blame her for not leaving the comforts of her home?

While she tries to piece together what happened, she’s forced to face her own past in order to decipher between fact and fiction. She watched what her neighbors tried to keep submerged, and I wondered from what she was keeping herself distracted.Īfter a new family moves in across the way, Anna witnesses a murder that left me wondering not only about the trauma that traps her in her home, but what happens to women “who view too much” (4). While Anna, a former psychiatrist suffering from agoraphobia, peered into her neighbor’s windows, I pried into the life she (mis)represented. While our doors have collectively remained shut, our current state of sequestering opens up new possibilities to connect with the protagonist, Anna Fox. Recently, however, what was once a place in which I felt I was in total control, has since become a reminder of what little control I actually have. For that weekend, I found great comfort in my cozy apartment. I soon found myself perched in my yellow chair, where I remained from the first word until I turned the final page of The Woman in the Window. When I opened the package from my mom, I wasn’t sure how this mystery novel would be any different from the countless other thrillers with “woman” in the title that we’ve bonded over-books often turned into movies following white women who turn to wine for solace after their families fall apart.

Woman on the window book