Jane even sketches a picture of Anna.Ībout 150 pages later (it seems to take a long time to get to the main plot point) and after Anna spends a lot of time sitting at the many windows of her huge house and creepily looking into the houses of all her neighbours (don’t these people know how to close the blinds?), she sees Jane arguing angrily with someone in her lounge room.

They end up spending hours chatting, drinking, smoking and playing chess. Their teenage son Ethan brings a gift from his mother, then his mother Jane saves her from a panic attack when she steps outside to chase away Halloween trick-or-treaters egging the front of Anna’s house. When the Russells move in across the park, they are a painful reminder of the perfect family unit Anna has lost. To pass the time, Anna uses her experience as a former child psychologist to counsel others with agoraphobia on a website forum called the Agora, plays online chess, watches classic suspense movies and spies on her neighbours as they go about their lives. She’s separated from her husband and daughter (although she speaks to them daily) and her only connections to the outside world are her basement tenant, David, who does the odd jobs that being a shut-in prevents her from doing Bina, the physical therapist who is helping her recover from the physical injuries that led to her becoming a shut-in and Julian, the psychiatrist who is helping her recover from the psychological injuries that led to her becoming a shut-in. While it certainly makes for a readable (and very familiar) book, it’s hardly the formula for a remarkable novel.Īnna Fox has been an agoraphobic shut-in for ten months.

The Woman in the Window has literally cherry-picked plot points from so many well-known books and movies that it’s hard to find a single moment of originality within its pages. Here is the book that proves it isn’t true. Follow me on Twitter My Tweets Tags 2 Stars 2.5 Stars 3 Stars 4 stars 5 Stars A Book About Writing Adaptation Advice Amazon Australian Author Australian Fiction Author Black Spot Blog Post Book Book Review Books Chapter One Character Characters Death Development Dialogue Diary Dictionary Editing Employment Enemies Closer English Family Fiction Genre Goodreads Growth History Ideas Inspiration Job Liberty's Secret LinkedIn Marketing Master's Non-Fiction Novel Plot Poems Poetry Poets Practise Project December Project January Project October Publishing Reading Romance Rules Sequel Short Story Sisters Song Lyrics Spelling Stereotypes Study Text Prize Tips Top Ten Trine University Word Count Work Writer Writers Writing Writing Journal Young Adult ArchivesĪccording to TS Eliot, good writers borrow and great writers steal.

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