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CRC Analysis on A.J. Finn’s
New York Times Bestseller
the woman in the
window
“The Widescreen World of Dr. Anna Fox”
In December of the previous year something happened to former
child psychologist Anna Fox leaving her physically and psychologically
damaged. When one looks at the 38 year
old face they see pale skin crowned with dark brown hair with gray highlights
and putted eyes, but on deeper inspection, she is just a tatter of the face she
was once before, only stitched back together, barely holding on. (Left: artwork and copyright permission by Christal Ann Rice Cooper granted for this CRC Blog Post Only)
She is an alcoholic, a drug addict, and suffers from PTSD, panic
attacks, anxiety attacks, depression, survivor’s guilt, trauma, terror, and she is an agoraphobia, which makes her a recluse and a prisoner in her
own millions dollar four-story brownstone, facing Gramercy Park in Manhattan. (Below)
Each of the four floors of the brownstone has
its own function and purpose: the fully
furnished basement with
kitchen and bath being rented by the young, mysterious, attractive David. His main job is to look after her,
and do chores that require going outside; First Floor fully furnished kitchen, tomato red
bathroom, and living room with a door that leads to the
patio garden where a young ash tree grows fully in the far corner; Second floor consists of the library
and Anna’s office which includes the blue heavenly
rapture half bath; Third Floor consists of the master
bedroom, master bath, guest bedroom and en-suite; and Fourth Floor is her daughter’s bedroom and guest bedroom.
The entire four floors are almost covered with
glass windows giving Anna access to the lives of
the inhabitants of the five
townhouses she spies via her Nikon D5500 with Opteka lens camera. And what she doesn’t observe
through that Opteka
lens, Anna utilizes the best computer technology to discover personal histories
about her neighbors, ex-friends, and ex-coworkers – their financial records, their personal
lives, their career lives, and their past and present residences. She is the modern day detective and the
reader has to admit – Anna Fox has the gift.
It is however Halloween Day and Anna is focused
on conversing with her husband Ed and their daughter Olivia, 8, who is a ghost
for Halloween. Ten months ago Ed and
Olivia moved out of the brownstone and Anna misses them terribly and treasures
every visit and phone call she receives from her separated husband and daughter.
When not communicating with Ed and Olivia, Anna
still has a regular routine. She gets up
at 11 a.m. and drinks dark red merlot all day and all night. She also takes her rainbow collection of
prescribed medication, more than
she can count with two hands, daily – but not following
the directions – sometimes twice too much, sometimes triple too much, and other
times she just grabs a handful and pops it in her mouth and swallows with her
merlot, that dark red wine
that she orders in bulk once a month. She spends time on her computer in chat rooms with
other individuals who
have mental issues particularly issues of Agoraphobia, and she experiences affirmation when she gives them advice. She also
takes her daily on-line French lessons and chess lessons and gives her cat
Punch plenty of attention.
Every Tuesday her psychiatrist Dr. Julian Fielding meets her in the third floor library for her 45 minutes sessions. Every Thursday her physical therapist Bina shows no mercy and gives her painful but much needed therapy for her broken
body.
The remains of the day she spends watching movies on her big screen television religiously, fervently: The
Adams Family, Airplane, Charade, The
Big Clock, Casablanca, Dark Passage, Dead Calm, Double Indemnity, The
Fallen
Idol, Foreign Correspondent,
Frankenstein, Frantic,
Gaslight, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Holmes, Jude the Obscure, Le Boucher, Les Diaboliques, Midnight Lace, Ministry
of Fear, Murder My Sweet, Niagara, Night and the City, Night Must Fall, Out of
the Past, Rear
Window, Rebecca, Rififi, Saboteur, Shadow of Doubt, Side
Effects, Song of the Thin man, Star Wars, Sudden Fear!, That Darn Cat, The
Third Man, The Thin Man, The 39 Steps, Titanic, 23 Paces to Baker Street, The
Vanishing, Vertigo, Wait Until Dark, and Whirlpool.
Soon
the movies become more than just her religion but her way of communicating with
other people and her new language. This
new communication and new language appears at first to be a fantasy world that
Anna
lives in but then something happens and it all begins with her new neighbors – the Russell Family (Alistair and Jane Russell
and their teenage son
Ethan) who paid $3.45 million for their brownstone, located at number 207, and
moved in around Halloween.
More
importantly the Russell brownstone becomes the one family Anna spies on the
most – to the point it becomes an
obsession. Soon the obsession turns into personal
knowledge when an incident on Halloween day leads Jane Russell to Anna’s door
rescuing her from an anxiety attack.
This incident makes Anna even more
interested in the mysterious Jane Russell and on November 2 she finds herself
looking through her
lens into the Russell household studying Jane Russell.
I sip my wine, wipe my lip, raise the
Nikon again. Look through the lens.
She’s looking back at me.
I drop the camera in my lap.
No mistake: Even with my naked eyes, I can clearly see
her level gaze, her parted lips.
Page 084
Anna immediately runs into the shadows of her
own stairwell feeling ashamed, exposed, displayed, no longer hidden,
embarrassed, and no longer safe.
I think of Dr. Brulov in Spellbound: “My dear girl,
you cannot keep bumping your hear against reality and saying it is not there.”
Three minutes later, I step back into the
study. The Russells’ love seat is empty. I glance at Ethan’s bedroom; he’s
in there, crouched over his computer.
Carefully, I pick up the camera. It’s undamaged.
Then the doorbell rings.
It is the mysterious Jane and Anna
invites her in and for the next two and a half hours the two women commune
together over wine, brandy, cigarettes, playing chess, and talking about their lives. Anna even gives her a tour of the
four-story brownstone that she’s been
unable to leave for the past eleven
months.
Then on Wednesday November 3 Anna hears a
blood- curdling scream far more
terrifying than the screams from her movies that she had planned to watch that night Rope,
Strangers on a Train, North By
Northwest, or The Lady Vanishes.
I spin toward the kitchen windows.
The room is silent. My heart drums.
Waves of honeyed evening light outside,
wind shifting in the trees. Was it from
the street or –
And then again, dredged from the deep,
shredding the air, full-blooded and frenzied: the scream. Coming from number 207. The parlor windows gape, the curtains restless in the breeze.
Then on Thursday November 4 Anna hast two full
bottles of merlot and our
canisters of pills for her dinner while watching Dark
Passage over and over again and taking naps (or falling in and out of
consciousness) throughout. She also takes time to look through the lens at number 207.
A dark patch of crimson has stained the top of her blouse; even as I
watch, it spreads to her stomach. Her
hands scramble at her chest. Something
slender and silver has lodged there, like a hilt.
It is a hilt.
Now the blood surges up to her throat, washes it with red. Her mouth has gone slack; her brow is creased, as
though she’s confused. She
grips the hilt with one hand, limply.
With the other she reaches out, her fingers aimed toward the window.
She’s pointed straight at me.
Anna is convinced that she witnessed the murder
of Jane Russell. She calls the
authorities, talks to Ed and Olivia, talks to her psychiatrist, her physical
therapist but nobody
seems to take her seriously. Some think she’s had some kind of
hallucination, others think she’s in a fantasy world, others think she’s
seeking attention, and with all of these voices unified in telling her she
imagined things Anna
begins to wonder just how sane or insane she is. Soon she is on the search not only for the
truth but also for the one true Anna – and both quests are terrifying keeping
the reader grasping for breath until the last page is read.
canisters of pills for her dinner while watching Dark
Passage over and over again and taking naps (or falling in and out of
consciousness) throughout. She also takes time to look through the lens at number 207.
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