A plot for success

Rajdeep Bains

AJ Finn (pseudonym of US books editor Daniel Mallory) has made a debut that dreams are made of. The novel, The Woman in the Window, has already been hailed as the natural successor to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train. It has not only secured deals in 37 different territories (a record for a debut novel) but also has the honour of getting praise from Stephen King (“Unputdownable”) and Gillian Flynn (“Astounding, Thrilling, Amazing”) as blurbs on the cover. A movie version, produced by Scott Rudin (Oscar winner for No Country for Old Men) is soon to follow.

What makes it such a success? In Mallory’s own words, “If I were to boil my publishing credo down to three words it would be: ‘Must Have Plot.’” And what a plot! Multiple twists in the tale leave the reader spellbound at the writer’s art. The setting though simple, is set off by the complexity of the characters and their thoughts. Then there’s the narrative that stays mostly in the present but does touch upon a traumatic past; and a storyline that will definitely renew an interest in psychological thrillers.

The novel tells the story of Dr Anna Fox, a child psychologist living in Harlem. An accident leaves her as an agoraphobic, terrified of venturing out of the safe confines of her four-storey home. She now spends most of her days drinking huge quantities of wine, mixing it with a cocktail of prescription pills that leave her groggy and delusional. For entertainment, she spies on her neighbours through the lens of her Nikon camera. The rest of the time is spent in missing her husband and eight-year-old daughter, who left her a year ago, and in watching black-and-white movies on a loop. It’s been eleven months of this.

Then she witnesses a murder. And no one believes her. She’s not even sure she believes herself. 

Written like diary entries spanning across a month, much of Mallory’s descriptions of Anna’s depressive drinking, separation from her family, possible delusions, and strange obsessions, come as a first-person narrative. He hopes, through this novel and its description about depression, to open up a dialogue on the disease and its effect on lives. Having coped with a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder himself, Mallory is sensitive in his treatment of the disease, while at the same time being chillingly realistic.

On being questioned on what seems an anomaly in the realism of the novel, why anyone would live with their blinds up at all times, Mallory says, “New Yorkers do that. Actually Londoners do that. You walk through parts of both cities in the evening and houses will have lives on full display.” 

So, again, what makes it a success? Complex characters that explore and exploit each others’ minds, a story which though limited in setting, has all the intricacy of a symphony, a plot that burns with energy and builds with all the power of a thunderstorm, where you hear the crash of thunder, experience the peal of lightning, and an urgency that says pay attention, your life depends on it. In other words, not just a success but a masterpiece!