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The Woman in the Wall
Anna is more than shy. She is nearly invisible. At seven, terrified of school, Anna retreats within the walls of her family's enormous house, and builds a world of passageways and hidden rooms. As the years go by, people forget she ever existed. Then a mysterious note is thrust through a crack in the wall, and Anna must decide whether or not to come out of hiding. Patrice Kindl's astounding, inventive novel blends fantasy and reality -- and readers will not forget it.
192 pages, Paperback
First published March 31, 1997
42 people are currently reading
1711 people want to read
About the author
Patrice Kindl
10 books173 followersChildhood:
I was born in Alplaus New York in 1951, the youngest of four daughters. My father is a mechanical engineer, my mother a housewife. My family is very nice – I like them all a lot. As a child I loved animals and read obsessively.
We had (still have) a family cottage on Lake George. The people who live next door are life-long friends. On summer weekdays during my childhood there were ten females in the two houses, no males. As a result of this background I feel that I understand girls better than boys, which is why I write primarily for girls.
Education and other jobs:
After high school I went to Webster College in St. Louis, Missouri. Oddly enough, given the location, it was a well-thought-of theater school. I attended for a year and a half and then (this was the 60’s, early 70’s) dropped out and decamped for New York City and a real drama school (not a liberal arts college like Webster). I appeared in a few television commercials, waitressed, auditioned and did a little modeling.
After three or four years of this sort of thing I realized I was going nowhere fast. I came back upstate and worked, at first full-time and then, after I married and my son was born, part-time, as a secretary at a consulting engineering firm called Encotech. As a result, I am an excellent touch typist today, which is handy for a writer.
I only began writing seriously when I was in my late thirties and was first published in my early forties. While I worked on OWL IN LOVE (my first book) I became involved in a program called Helping Hands, in which I raised two monkeys to be aides to quadriplegics. You can check it out at www.helpinghandsmonkeys.org. You can see a photograph of Kandy on this page and Susi on the FAQ page.
Family:
My husband Paul is president of Encotech (that’s where I met him). My son Alex is 25. He and his art rock band Bible Study (no religious connotation) live with us part-time. They rehearse directly over my office, so it is lucky that I think they are great musicians (Click here to listen to one of their songs). The vocalist is one of America’s few female Master Falconers. When the band is in residence we also have several hawks or falcons.
I was born in Alplaus New York in 1951, the youngest of four daughters. My father is a mechanical engineer, my mother a housewife. My family is very nice – I like them all a lot. As a child I loved animals and read obsessively.
We had (still have) a family cottage on Lake George. The people who live next door are life-long friends. On summer weekdays during my childhood there were ten females in the two houses, no males. As a result of this background I feel that I understand girls better than boys, which is why I write primarily for girls.
Education and other jobs:
After high school I went to Webster College in St. Louis, Missouri. Oddly enough, given the location, it was a well-thought-of theater school. I attended for a year and a half and then (this was the 60’s, early 70’s) dropped out and decamped for New York City and a real drama school (not a liberal arts college like Webster). I appeared in a few television commercials, waitressed, auditioned and did a little modeling.
After three or four years of this sort of thing I realized I was going nowhere fast. I came back upstate and worked, at first full-time and then, after I married and my son was born, part-time, as a secretary at a consulting engineering firm called Encotech. As a result, I am an excellent touch typist today, which is handy for a writer.
I only began writing seriously when I was in my late thirties and was first published in my early forties. While I worked on OWL IN LOVE (my first book) I became involved in a program called Helping Hands, in which I raised two monkeys to be aides to quadriplegics. You can check it out at www.helpinghandsmonkeys.org. You can see a photograph of Kandy on this page and Susi on the FAQ page.
Family:
My husband Paul is president of Encotech (that’s where I met him). My son Alex is 25. He and his art rock band Bible Study (no religious connotation) live with us part-time. They rehearse directly over my office, so it is lucky that I think they are great musicians (Click here to listen to one of their songs). The vocalist is one of America’s few female Master Falconers. When the band is in residence we also have several hawks or falcons.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 256 reviews
July 6, 2013
For the first time in years and years, I was out of the house. I stood alone under the naked sky with nothing but air and space between me and the huge, barbarously bright sun. I looked up into the sky and felt dizzy. At any moment, I felt, I might fall of the earth, I might be pulled into the greedy heat of the sun. Or I might go flying off into dark, eternal nothingness.
The water girl is looked through, seeing like nothing. Anna is seven years old when she disappears into the house. Please don't make me go to school. She disappears into a twinge of an idea and emerges from the cocoon an idea of beauty. I wanted to like this book but I kind of hated it. She's shy. Who is she? She's shy. Oh, she's pretty. Pretty you say? You don't say. Well, why didn't you say so. Please say more than that.
She is nothing. Anna has magical abilities. Her father was good with power tools so she is good at power tools. She can steal her home, make it hold her. There is a kitchen behind their kitchen. I would compare it to annoying as shit Mary-Sue fantasy novel characters. You know the ones with heroines who know everything, can do everything and never had to try for any of it. It was more like an annoying as shit magical realism novel than that, though. The magic appears to be taken. You had a guardian angel and they took care of you when you needed it. Please don't grow up. Don't think for yourself. There will be a prince with all of the answers... End of story because there is no story.
Anna is pretty, in the end. This pissed me off. Well, it would be more accurate to say that it annoyed me because I didn't care enough about her to be pissed off. I was pissed that I wasted my time reading it when I could have read a book that had something to say. She knows everything unless it is convenient for the story for her not to know it. Anna never went to school. Her little sister's homework is easy for her all the same. Too easy. She can make perfect outfits as a small child. Okay. Some people are talented. She doesn't understand puberty despite watching her sister and her sister's friends through spy holes she fashioned in the walls. Her understanding is an accent put on by a bad actor. Kindl puts it on when she wants to. Anna is stupid about the world only when she feels ugly. No one can see her so why would it matter that she felt "huge"? It spoke more that she wanted to be perfect or nothing at all. Why was staying a tiny child perfection in the first place?
She lives behind their every movement. She wills herself to be so small that she falls into a handbag of the school principal. I have read complaints about this as if it were the sole time that Kindl drops the accent and does the convenient magic for no reason out of nowhere. It isn't. Anna doesn't want to be seen so they don't see her. There was a good early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer about this. A girl becomes invisible to her high school classmates. Literally invisible. It hurt to not matter in that story. Kindl's book does not carry the same meaning because it doesn't mean anything to Anna to be seen by anyone, or not seen. She is meaninglessly afraid. I had the feeling that she just liked being little like this woman I used to work with who envied women who were smaller than five feet tall. She liked to feel little next to her Army officer husband, really.
Anna's mother fears that she is insane. Did she make up this other daughter, her middle child? I don't understand how she could think that she imagined giving birth. The eldest daughter, the entitled Andrea, doesn't want a little sister. She practices making fun of less confident girls on Anna, really. Andrea isn't important to Anna, though, except as a source for later envy over boys. It was a wasted opportunity because Anna already wasn't there. The youngest Kirsty is a loving kid. It was beyond annoying that Anna didn't care that Kirsty loved her and wanted her sister around. The mother and youngest sister don't forget about Anna who hides from them. It was the saddest for them hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Their impotence is not important to Anna. Where is Kindl going with this? Anna has a fantasy of being little and unseen and that's it? Why did she pretend it was about shyness when it wasn't? It would have been interesting if it were more important that Anna doesn't want her family, yet must want something enough to watch them in this way. Why would she watch them yet will not talk to them?
But no, she just wanted an effing boyfriend. Anna must have sensed that there was something she wanted before puberty hit and explained it to her that the only thing that mattered was being pretty and getting a boyfriend.
Ugh.
It is missed when Anna steals her sister's secret correspondence from a secret admirer. What happened to her womb of the house?
The boy figures out who she is. F. and her sister find Anna and she must come out because the is going to get married to F.'s father. Anna makes the kind of deal that depends on the belief that time will never pass enough to get there. I'll be different and put myself out there tomorrow, if tomorrow never comes. This was believable about the inner dread and wish that you could be different. Kindl understood this about shyness and then she ruined it all with the slutty Halloween costume and successfully flirting with the popular boy that popular Andrea wanted for herself. A person with no human interaction at all manages this because she had the only thing that mattered. Anna is pretty so it is all okay. Everyone accepts her. What about her denial of everyone else? Why wasn't that important? If Woman in the Wall had been worth its salt that would have been what was important. She crawled through too small tunnels, carried her food tray in her teeth, for seven and a half years. What did she want out of life other than the boy she barely knew?
The book opened in what had to have been a nod to The Smith's tune 'Half a Person'. She is shy and wants to tell you the story of her life. Kindl dropped the accent of Oh no, I'm boring, you won't read this. If you skipped that dull passage what I said was this... Why would she write a diary in the first place? It's a big old mess. I don't think that I liked that she relied on knowledge of Morrissey and shyness to relate to people to hook into her story. It wasn't about shyness at all. I don't know what it was. If you are pretty all you need is a man? Nothing else matters? What would have happened to Anna if she wasn't pretty? Why would a little girl institutionalize herself and it wouldn't hurt more to leave it, hurt more to live like that? Why wasn't that the story?
I read another one of her books, Owl in Love, a few years ago. I guess I didn't notice the functioning on the lust alone because the narrator had the instinctual mind and life span of an animal. My sister explained to me Kindl's last book Keeping the Castle as "Pretty = goodness". Ugh.
The water girl is looked through, seeing like nothing. Anna is seven years old when she disappears into the house. Please don't make me go to school. She disappears into a twinge of an idea and emerges from the cocoon an idea of beauty. I wanted to like this book but I kind of hated it. She's shy. Who is she? She's shy. Oh, she's pretty. Pretty you say? You don't say. Well, why didn't you say so. Please say more than that.
She is nothing. Anna has magical abilities. Her father was good with power tools so she is good at power tools. She can steal her home, make it hold her. There is a kitchen behind their kitchen. I would compare it to annoying as shit Mary-Sue fantasy novel characters. You know the ones with heroines who know everything, can do everything and never had to try for any of it. It was more like an annoying as shit magical realism novel than that, though. The magic appears to be taken. You had a guardian angel and they took care of you when you needed it. Please don't grow up. Don't think for yourself. There will be a prince with all of the answers... End of story because there is no story.
Anna is pretty, in the end. This pissed me off. Well, it would be more accurate to say that it annoyed me because I didn't care enough about her to be pissed off. I was pissed that I wasted my time reading it when I could have read a book that had something to say. She knows everything unless it is convenient for the story for her not to know it. Anna never went to school. Her little sister's homework is easy for her all the same. Too easy. She can make perfect outfits as a small child. Okay. Some people are talented. She doesn't understand puberty despite watching her sister and her sister's friends through spy holes she fashioned in the walls. Her understanding is an accent put on by a bad actor. Kindl puts it on when she wants to. Anna is stupid about the world only when she feels ugly. No one can see her so why would it matter that she felt "huge"? It spoke more that she wanted to be perfect or nothing at all. Why was staying a tiny child perfection in the first place?
She lives behind their every movement. She wills herself to be so small that she falls into a handbag of the school principal. I have read complaints about this as if it were the sole time that Kindl drops the accent and does the convenient magic for no reason out of nowhere. It isn't. Anna doesn't want to be seen so they don't see her. There was a good early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer about this. A girl becomes invisible to her high school classmates. Literally invisible. It hurt to not matter in that story. Kindl's book does not carry the same meaning because it doesn't mean anything to Anna to be seen by anyone, or not seen. She is meaninglessly afraid. I had the feeling that she just liked being little like this woman I used to work with who envied women who were smaller than five feet tall. She liked to feel little next to her Army officer husband, really.
Anna's mother fears that she is insane. Did she make up this other daughter, her middle child? I don't understand how she could think that she imagined giving birth. The eldest daughter, the entitled Andrea, doesn't want a little sister. She practices making fun of less confident girls on Anna, really. Andrea isn't important to Anna, though, except as a source for later envy over boys. It was a wasted opportunity because Anna already wasn't there. The youngest Kirsty is a loving kid. It was beyond annoying that Anna didn't care that Kirsty loved her and wanted her sister around. The mother and youngest sister don't forget about Anna who hides from them. It was the saddest for them hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Their impotence is not important to Anna. Where is Kindl going with this? Anna has a fantasy of being little and unseen and that's it? Why did she pretend it was about shyness when it wasn't? It would have been interesting if it were more important that Anna doesn't want her family, yet must want something enough to watch them in this way. Why would she watch them yet will not talk to them?
But no, she just wanted an effing boyfriend. Anna must have sensed that there was something she wanted before puberty hit and explained it to her that the only thing that mattered was being pretty and getting a boyfriend.
I was a woman because somewhere out there was F, a man.
Ugh.
It is missed when Anna steals her sister's secret correspondence from a secret admirer. What happened to her womb of the house?
The boy figures out who she is. F. and her sister find Anna and she must come out because the is going to get married to F.'s father. Anna makes the kind of deal that depends on the belief that time will never pass enough to get there. I'll be different and put myself out there tomorrow, if tomorrow never comes. This was believable about the inner dread and wish that you could be different. Kindl understood this about shyness and then she ruined it all with the slutty Halloween costume and successfully flirting with the popular boy that popular Andrea wanted for herself. A person with no human interaction at all manages this because she had the only thing that mattered. Anna is pretty so it is all okay. Everyone accepts her. What about her denial of everyone else? Why wasn't that important? If Woman in the Wall had been worth its salt that would have been what was important. She crawled through too small tunnels, carried her food tray in her teeth, for seven and a half years. What did she want out of life other than the boy she barely knew?
The book opened in what had to have been a nod to The Smith's tune 'Half a Person'. She is shy and wants to tell you the story of her life. Kindl dropped the accent of Oh no, I'm boring, you won't read this. If you skipped that dull passage what I said was this... Why would she write a diary in the first place? It's a big old mess. I don't think that I liked that she relied on knowledge of Morrissey and shyness to relate to people to hook into her story. It wasn't about shyness at all. I don't know what it was. If you are pretty all you need is a man? Nothing else matters? What would have happened to Anna if she wasn't pretty? Why would a little girl institutionalize herself and it wouldn't hurt more to leave it, hurt more to live like that? Why wasn't that the story?
I read another one of her books, Owl in Love, a few years ago. I guess I didn't notice the functioning on the lust alone because the narrator had the instinctual mind and life span of an animal. My sister explained to me Kindl's last book Keeping the Castle as "Pretty = goodness". Ugh.
February 11, 2025
I picked up
The Woman in the Wall
because it sounded like a ghost story, but it's actually about a girl growing from 7 to 14-years-old while having literally boarded herself up in the walls of the family home. If that sounds ridiculous, it is. It reads like two separate books smooshed together, one less promising than the other, but because they blend so poorly and are such blatantly different genres I can't decide which half is worse.
THE VERDICT? There are way too many disconnects in this book for it to be any good. Anna wants to be seen, but she closes herself in the walls (literally). She wants to be heard, but she does whatever she's told without question and doesn't speak up. Her mother accuses her of making her look crazy to the school therapist, when she'd been taking advantage of her daughter's skills and keeping her out of school for two years, and only wanted her to start classes so the neighbors wouldn't think she was lying about having a third daughter. There's nothing to be gained from the power to fade and no lessons to be learned from it, it just is. The two sections of the book are distinctly different realities with a clumsy puberty storyline connecting them.
Anna's personality flip-flops between uninteresting and offensively foolish. Her motivations are nonexistent. The setting of the house was uninteresting and we never get beyond it. The change in tone ruined what could have unfolded to a nice fantasy world. About the only good thing was the future stepfather, whose firm grasp on reality helped clarify everything around him as a bad joke.
THE VERDICT? There are way too many disconnects in this book for it to be any good. Anna wants to be seen, but she closes herself in the walls (literally). She wants to be heard, but she does whatever she's told without question and doesn't speak up. Her mother accuses her of making her look crazy to the school therapist, when she'd been taking advantage of her daughter's skills and keeping her out of school for two years, and only wanted her to start classes so the neighbors wouldn't think she was lying about having a third daughter. There's nothing to be gained from the power to fade and no lessons to be learned from it, it just is. The two sections of the book are distinctly different realities with a clumsy puberty storyline connecting them.
Anna's personality flip-flops between uninteresting and offensively foolish. Her motivations are nonexistent. The setting of the house was uninteresting and we never get beyond it. The change in tone ruined what could have unfolded to a nice fantasy world. About the only good thing was the future stepfather, whose firm grasp on reality helped clarify everything around him as a bad joke.
February 1, 2024
What a delightfully weird little book! I read this a BUNCH of times as a teen, but haven't revisited in at least a decade. Happy to say that I still loved it, with some caveats. The first few chapters were a solid 5 stars for me, and I even laughed out loud in the first chapter at an awkward moment (I don't remember it being a funny book), but I think the end of the book was just three stars. So, four stars when averaged. The book is written from Anna's POV, and her serious old-fashioned yet witty voice is what carries the story the most for me. This is NOT a realistic book, but more like a weird fable, so don't go into it with rigid logic because it'll just confound you.
The gist is that the main character, Anna, is extremely shy and agoraphobic, to the point where she LITERALLY blends into the background. Her family (mom and two sisters) have a hard time even seeing her. Despite this, she's an incredibly precocious child who taught herself to sew and use tools at a very young age. (At this point, I have to compare her a little bit to Roald Dahl's Matilda on the unbelievably genius level.) The visual of this seven year old girl cutting up a whole stack of plywood on a table saw just to annoy her family is hilarious to me somehow. I've labeled this book as "magical realism" not because there's actual magic, but just because the whole book has an air of suspended disbelief. That Anna is so small and slight that she can (at one point) be mistaken for a doll and fit inside a large handbag is totally fantastical, though it's never presented that way. It's whimsical in a child's fantasy way that this family lives in this rambling old Victorian house, and their father HAPPENED to fill it with tons of building supplies and tools before he vanished, and the previous owner just HAPPENED to have owned a fabric store and filled the attic full of bolts of cloth before she left.
Both of these happy, unlikely sources of supplies benefit Anna well, when she retreats from the outside world into the house. After being threatened with going to school, she decided to wall herself off (literally) from the rest of the world, and begins building secret passages throughout the house, where she then hides. She's the original dweller of "the cupboard under the stairs", as this book was published about 6 months prior to Harry Potter. She spends so much time hidden away, that over the years her family begins to think that they imagined her existence. She becomes almost like a house brownie who cooks, cleans, sews, and repairs the house without ever being seen. So....there's no magic, but it's, again, kind of like a child's secret fantasy.
THIS whole concept always charmed me when I was younger, and it still does. Secret passages hidden throughout a big old house? YES PLEASE? I too was very shy when I was young, so obviously I could relate to Anna's plight. I'm sure the book is a metaphor for social anxiety, but when I read it it was just a fun story.
The book changes tack about halfway through, when Anna begins to go through puberty whilst hidden within the walls of the house. By this point, no one in her family has seen her for years, so she goes through the experience alone, only figuring out what's going on by observing her sisters and their friends. The rest of the book is Anna dealing with the shame she feels for her changing body, all of those confusing inner emotions, then the delirious intensity of a first crush, and eventually how she learns to come out of hiding. Again, I'm sure this is all a metaphor for regular adolescent social anxiety, amplified and whimsified for the story...but I still like it just as a story.
As I said above, the first part of the story is my favorite bit. The secret passage business appeals to my introvert self SO MUCH that this book is basically like a reader-insertion fantasy. The second part of the book is good, but it strikes a little too close to the uncomfortable parts of adolescence so I enjoyed it less. It becomes less whimsy, and more like a regular teen book, though still a weird teen book. The book is also only about 200 pages long, and I kind of wish it had been longer so that Anna's metamorphosis (oh, the lepidoptera symbolism is strong in this book) could have had more time to flow more naturally. Her illogical intensity toward her first crush is frustrating as an adult reading it ("This will NOT lead to a healthy relationship!"), but is also TOTALLY how a fourteen year old sees things, and she is the one narrating. If the book had been longer, perhaps all of Anna's new-found interpersonal relationships could have been explored a little better, but as it was the end of the book feels very rushed.
So, overall...I'm not sure who I'd recommend this book to. It's a strange one, but I know many other people have found it charming as well.
The gist is that the main character, Anna, is extremely shy and agoraphobic, to the point where she LITERALLY blends into the background. Her family (mom and two sisters) have a hard time even seeing her. Despite this, she's an incredibly precocious child who taught herself to sew and use tools at a very young age. (At this point, I have to compare her a little bit to Roald Dahl's Matilda on the unbelievably genius level.) The visual of this seven year old girl cutting up a whole stack of plywood on a table saw just to annoy her family is hilarious to me somehow. I've labeled this book as "magical realism" not because there's actual magic, but just because the whole book has an air of suspended disbelief. That Anna is so small and slight that she can (at one point) be mistaken for a doll and fit inside a large handbag is totally fantastical, though it's never presented that way. It's whimsical in a child's fantasy way that this family lives in this rambling old Victorian house, and their father HAPPENED to fill it with tons of building supplies and tools before he vanished, and the previous owner just HAPPENED to have owned a fabric store and filled the attic full of bolts of cloth before she left.
Both of these happy, unlikely sources of supplies benefit Anna well, when she retreats from the outside world into the house. After being threatened with going to school, she decided to wall herself off (literally) from the rest of the world, and begins building secret passages throughout the house, where she then hides. She's the original dweller of "the cupboard under the stairs", as this book was published about 6 months prior to Harry Potter. She spends so much time hidden away, that over the years her family begins to think that they imagined her existence. She becomes almost like a house brownie who cooks, cleans, sews, and repairs the house without ever being seen. So....there's no magic, but it's, again, kind of like a child's secret fantasy.
THIS whole concept always charmed me when I was younger, and it still does. Secret passages hidden throughout a big old house? YES PLEASE? I too was very shy when I was young, so obviously I could relate to Anna's plight. I'm sure the book is a metaphor for social anxiety, but when I read it it was just a fun story.
The book changes tack about halfway through, when Anna begins to go through puberty whilst hidden within the walls of the house. By this point, no one in her family has seen her for years, so she goes through the experience alone, only figuring out what's going on by observing her sisters and their friends. The rest of the book is Anna dealing with the shame she feels for her changing body, all of those confusing inner emotions, then the delirious intensity of a first crush, and eventually how she learns to come out of hiding. Again, I'm sure this is all a metaphor for regular adolescent social anxiety, amplified and whimsified for the story...but I still like it just as a story.
As I said above, the first part of the story is my favorite bit. The secret passage business appeals to my introvert self SO MUCH that this book is basically like a reader-insertion fantasy. The second part of the book is good, but it strikes a little too close to the uncomfortable parts of adolescence so I enjoyed it less. It becomes less whimsy, and more like a regular teen book, though still a weird teen book. The book is also only about 200 pages long, and I kind of wish it had been longer so that Anna's metamorphosis (oh, the lepidoptera symbolism is strong in this book) could have had more time to flow more naturally. Her illogical intensity toward her first crush is frustrating as an adult reading it ("This will NOT lead to a healthy relationship!"), but is also TOTALLY how a fourteen year old sees things, and she is the one narrating. If the book had been longer, perhaps all of Anna's new-found interpersonal relationships could have been explored a little better, but as it was the end of the book feels very rushed.
So, overall...I'm not sure who I'd recommend this book to. It's a strange one, but I know many other people have found it charming as well.
August 3, 2007
I could always relate to her in this story because she was so shy, and I've always loved small places. The story is about this girl going from girlhood to puberty who is so small she's practically invisible, and she lives in this huge house with her family, and to get out of having to go to school, she crawls inside the walls and makes a home for herself in the walls. Looking back on it now, I understand what it symbolizes, and it makes me appreciate it even more. I also like Owl in Love, though I never finished it.
February 23, 2024
I love how I was sucked into the world behind the walls I’m so glad I finally read it
November 29, 2015
A person fades from view and lives their life invisible to others. This is one of those premises that immediately intrigues me. Displaced Person by Lee Harding is another example, and that's one of the scariest and best books I've read in the last few years.
The Woman in the Wall is a different take on this premise. It seems like more of a fable of sorts. At age 7, Anna is all but invisible already. With "a face like a glass of water," she is painfully shy, ignored by almost everyone and frequently misplaced by her mother and sisters. She has sewing and building skills out of place for a 7-year old, but I can accept that with this book's fable-like theme. When her mom decides that it's time for Anna to go to school, Anna does not want to do this with extreme prejudice. When the school psychologist visits their home and Anna falls unnoticed into the woman's purse and is almost taken away, Anna decides that rather than risk being outside again, she will just build herself into the walls of the home where no one can find her.
She lives the next 7 years scurrying about in a womblike series of rooms and passages, escaping the notice of her family, who eventually forgets about her. But when she intercepts a secret love note intended for her attractive and popular older sister, Anna is tempted to leave her burrow and rejoin the outside world.
Sometimes all the world's problems and dealing with humanity gets to be too much for me, and I want to build myself into the walls/disappear/live isolated on an island for 18 years/move into a cave in the mountains. That sounds pretty good. But I'm not going to do that, so when I start feeling that way, I'll just reread one of these books.
The Woman in the Wall is a different take on this premise. It seems like more of a fable of sorts. At age 7, Anna is all but invisible already. With "a face like a glass of water," she is painfully shy, ignored by almost everyone and frequently misplaced by her mother and sisters. She has sewing and building skills out of place for a 7-year old, but I can accept that with this book's fable-like theme. When her mom decides that it's time for Anna to go to school, Anna does not want to do this with extreme prejudice. When the school psychologist visits their home and Anna falls unnoticed into the woman's purse and is almost taken away, Anna decides that rather than risk being outside again, she will just build herself into the walls of the home where no one can find her.
She lives the next 7 years scurrying about in a womblike series of rooms and passages, escaping the notice of her family, who eventually forgets about her. But when she intercepts a secret love note intended for her attractive and popular older sister, Anna is tempted to leave her burrow and rejoin the outside world.
Sometimes all the world's problems and dealing with humanity gets to be too much for me, and I want to build myself into the walls/disappear/live isolated on an island for 18 years/move into a cave in the mountains. That sounds pretty good. But I'm not going to do that, so when I start feeling that way, I'll just reread one of these books.
September 21, 2023
Child me loved this. Adult me is super weirded out. What kind of seven year old elf child is somehow a master builder, strong enough to move armchairs through secret passages with ease, and is still tiny enough to fall into and get lost within a hapless social worker's purse? And when she becomes a teenager, a strange guy's cryptic affection somehow magically cures her of severe agoraphobia? Like sure, she'll build a series of small passages within her family home to avoid all human interaction for SEVEN YEARS. Her family FORGETS THAT SHE EXISTS. And then suddenly within the span of 24 hours, she becomes a regularly functioning teenager in a very normal family with no need for therapy? Honestly, my biggest grievance is how her whole self is invisible until she finds a letter intended for her sister from a dudebro™ (who turns out to be her almost-stepbrother), and she's all like "wow a man if he's a man I am therefore a woman and my life has purpose now" and it's all just a bit too vomit-y for me. I remember reading this as a kid and loving the secret passages, but man this was so gross to reread as an adult.
May 9, 2009
Anna is so shy that she is practically invisible and is afraid to speak to anyone outside her family. Terrified of starting school, she hides in the space inside the walls of her family's house. She stays there for years, coming out when her sisters are asleep to steal food.
April 5, 2010
I don't know how to rate this book, so I'm giving it a 3. I really want to reread it again. I read it a long, long time ago, and I don't think I really understood it when I read it. I remember feeling like I had a lot of unanswered questions by the ending. I'd really like to go back and read it again, to see if I maybe get a little more out of it this time, and can put the haze recollections together in my mind.
November 16, 2017
Questo è un libro per ragazzi e come tale è scritto con un linguaggio abbastanza semplice ma non per questo banale.
La storia, alla fine, è una grande metafora della solitudine e dell'isolamento, volontario o meno, che molti adolescenti si trovano a vivere.
Anna, la seconda di 3 sorelle il cui padre è sparito in circostanze misteriose dentro una enorme biblioteca, è praticamente invisibile agli occhi degli altri perchè molto piccola e quasi "trasparente". Anche mamma e sorelle fanno davvero fatica a vederla e lei non è mai andata a scuola ne ha mai messo piede fuori di casa per paura del mondo.
Un evento traumatico la costringerà per anni a nascondersi tra le mura di casa lasciando solo piccoli regali in giro per dare segni della sua presenza alla famiglia.
Questo isolamento però verrà turbato da un imminente cambiamento che metterà Anna davanti a diverse scelte ed esperienze nuove.
Anna può essere un qualsiasi adolescente abile e dotato intellettualmente (Anna costruisce muri, legge Jane Eyre, ripara lavandini, cuce camicie...) che non riesce a sopportare il mondo esterno e si chiude in se stesso finchè qualcuno o qualcosa non ne mette in luce le doti e trasforma il bruco in farfalla.
Consigliato ai ragazzi perchè ci si possono immedesimare sicuramente.
La storia, alla fine, è una grande metafora della solitudine e dell'isolamento, volontario o meno, che molti adolescenti si trovano a vivere.
Anna, la seconda di 3 sorelle il cui padre è sparito in circostanze misteriose dentro una enorme biblioteca, è praticamente invisibile agli occhi degli altri perchè molto piccola e quasi "trasparente". Anche mamma e sorelle fanno davvero fatica a vederla e lei non è mai andata a scuola ne ha mai messo piede fuori di casa per paura del mondo.
Un evento traumatico la costringerà per anni a nascondersi tra le mura di casa lasciando solo piccoli regali in giro per dare segni della sua presenza alla famiglia.
Questo isolamento però verrà turbato da un imminente cambiamento che metterà Anna davanti a diverse scelte ed esperienze nuove.
Anna può essere un qualsiasi adolescente abile e dotato intellettualmente (Anna costruisce muri, legge Jane Eyre, ripara lavandini, cuce camicie...) che non riesce a sopportare il mondo esterno e si chiude in se stesso finchè qualcuno o qualcosa non ne mette in luce le doti e trasforma il bruco in farfalla.
Consigliato ai ragazzi perchè ci si possono immedesimare sicuramente.
July 25, 2007
A girl named Anna (Kindl must like "A" names, the goose girl's name is Alexandria Aurora Fortunato) is so shy that she literally disappears into the background. Even her family has a hard time seeing her. When she is told she will have to go to school she is so scared that she builds a space for herself in the walls (apparently she is an exceptional homemaker and handyman and is able to make quite a home for herself in the walls) and hides there until her family starts to think she isn't even there anymore. Eventually she makes a friend with someone "on the outside" and decides to come out of hiding to divert a crises happening in her home.
Enjoying this book requires some "suspension of disbelief", but I had no problems there and I did enjoy it. It is certainly a unique book.
Enjoying this book requires some "suspension of disbelief", but I had no problems there and I did enjoy it. It is certainly a unique book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 11, 2024
2023
2019
Anna is a tiny, tiny girl. So tiny you might not even see her, even if you were looking straight at her. She likes it that way. She's dreadfully shy, so being nearly invisible is perfect for her. Because she is scared of the outside world (and being forced into it), she designs her own little safe place - a place inside of the walls of her own home.
It's an interesting story about shyness, becoming a woman, and finding out that new experiences may not be so bad after all.
2015
2019
Anna is a tiny, tiny girl. So tiny you might not even see her, even if you were looking straight at her. She likes it that way. She's dreadfully shy, so being nearly invisible is perfect for her. Because she is scared of the outside world (and being forced into it), she designs her own little safe place - a place inside of the walls of her own home.
It's an interesting story about shyness, becoming a woman, and finding out that new experiences may not be so bad after all.
2015
January 17, 2008
One of the greatest books ever! This girl is so pale and shy that some people can't even see her. When things start changing in her family, she reacts by living in the walls of her Victorian-era home, becoming a sort of good spirit for the rest of the family.
September 20, 2023
"The Woman in the Wall" - written by Patrice Kindl and published in 1997 by Houghton Mifflin. Such a strange story! A young girl is mostly invisible except to her family when they look at her very closely. Around age seven, instead of going to school, she gradually walls her existence into partitions she builds throughout her large home, but keeps tabs on her family through peepholes. A boy visiting the house discovers her, and he and her sister convince her to emerge some seven years later - at a Halloween party! From the point of view of a young teenage girl, this book is likely a lot of fun - a what if that might seem absurdly possible. Strange, but kinda cool. On the back jacket, "This is a Junior Library Guild selection, chosen as an outstanding book for boys and girls."
February 24, 2024
2.5 stars
I read this when I was a kid and only remembered fairly creepy and vague details. Just reread and can confirm, strange but fun read👍
Edit: After reading other two star reviews, I realise how skewed my rating system is, so I'll clarify. This was a bad book. The plot was poorly executed, the characters without depth, and the tone misleading. I still enjoyed it. I finished it in a couple hours and it was a nostalgic way to end my day. My favorite character was Kirsty, which says a lot because that's a stupid name. Anyways, the reviews are funny.
I read this when I was a kid and only remembered fairly creepy and vague details. Just reread and can confirm, strange but fun read👍
Edit: After reading other two star reviews, I realise how skewed my rating system is, so I'll clarify. This was a bad book. The plot was poorly executed, the characters without depth, and the tone misleading. I still enjoyed it. I finished it in a couple hours and it was a nostalgic way to end my day. My favorite character was Kirsty, which says a lot because that's a stupid name. Anyways, the reviews are funny.
January 2, 2012
Anna is the middle child in her family, but people have trouble seeing her. She’s about 7 years old when the story begins and her mother is trying to get her to go to school. Everyone outside of their family believes that Anna’s mother is crazy, because no one outside of their family has ever seen Anna. The thought of school and a traumatic visit from a school official has Anna running scared. She’s always been very handy, so she begins to construct secret rooms and passageways hidden within their huge Victorian home. Once her inner world is complete, Anna rarely ventures out into the rest of the house. She stays hidden in this place for another 7 years and by that time even her family has begun to suspect that they imagined her.
Anna’s older sister, Andrea, has become a beautiful young woman whose company is widely sought after, by girls and boys alike. One of these young male followers, F. leaves Andrea a note inside the wall one day, addressed only to A. Anna believes it is for her and she responds. Their correspondence grows until one day F. discovers Anna’s inner sanctum. He brings Kristy, Anna’s younger sister, into their confidence and together they plan to reintroduce Anna to the world. It seems that during her 7 years of hiding, she has become visible. Anna’s mother has also decided to marry F.’s father, Mr. Albright, and Mr. Albright wants to take them all to Chicago. That, too, means that Anna will eventually have to come out.
They decide she will make her debut on the night of Andrea’s Halloween party. Everyone is dressed up and Anna comes dressed as a luna moth. She dances with Andrea’s boyfriend, causes a huge ruckus, and is eventually reunited with her family – who are thrilled that they can finally see her.
This is just one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. You just have to accept that Anna’s practically invisible and that she’s the most capable 7 year old ever – who can sew and fix anything with professional skill. But I loved the idea of her building her own inner world and being this fey creature in her family’s home who does these kind things for them (almost like the elves/fairies in the shoemaker story).
Anna’s older sister, Andrea, has become a beautiful young woman whose company is widely sought after, by girls and boys alike. One of these young male followers, F. leaves Andrea a note inside the wall one day, addressed only to A. Anna believes it is for her and she responds. Their correspondence grows until one day F. discovers Anna’s inner sanctum. He brings Kristy, Anna’s younger sister, into their confidence and together they plan to reintroduce Anna to the world. It seems that during her 7 years of hiding, she has become visible. Anna’s mother has also decided to marry F.’s father, Mr. Albright, and Mr. Albright wants to take them all to Chicago. That, too, means that Anna will eventually have to come out.
They decide she will make her debut on the night of Andrea’s Halloween party. Everyone is dressed up and Anna comes dressed as a luna moth. She dances with Andrea’s boyfriend, causes a huge ruckus, and is eventually reunited with her family – who are thrilled that they can finally see her.
This is just one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. You just have to accept that Anna’s practically invisible and that she’s the most capable 7 year old ever – who can sew and fix anything with professional skill. But I loved the idea of her building her own inner world and being this fey creature in her family’s home who does these kind things for them (almost like the elves/fairies in the shoemaker story).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 7, 2009
Ahhh!! I remember this book from when I was younger but I never remembered the title! I LOVED this book. This is the one where the girl dresses up like a moth, right?
July 26, 2014
This book was really different. And I don't just mean in the sense of 'a quirky writing style'. It is flat out weird…. in a good way. It stands out quite well in my memory.
March 17, 2020
Bit of mind trip, that.
July 25, 2019
Enjoyed reading this a second time around. I read it when I was in 3rd grade and and some of the puberty things went over my head. This time around it was an understandable book which brought back memories of the first time I read it and how I felt and how it shaped my developing mind. I recommend it to anyone.
July 4, 2019
I first read this one in grade school. A beautiful and haunting modern fairy tale. The craftsperson in me is always enraptured. It’s definitely on the bizarre (and maybe a little disturbing) side if you think about the main characters mental health too much. The book fits very nicely within the realms of magical realism.
January 17, 2019
Short but clever. A few more references than necessary to how Anna physically matured, but overall an interesting blend of magical realism and 90s (I think that was the publishing date) contemporary.
March 10, 2020
I read this when I was like 12 years old. Reading it as an adult was an eye opening experience to say the least! This book is weird, even for the YA field.
October 12, 2020
I really liked the first half of this book, which felt to me like a gentler YA version of the dark cult thriller Bad Ronald. Its premise of a torturously shy girl hiding away from the world in the walls of her house has the enchanted feel of a realist fairy tale. But in the final third I felt the author was intruding upon the narration—I stopped believing the young teenage protagonist was at the helm (A young torturously shy girl who has spent the last seven years completely isolated from everyone and everything does not have the capacity to philosophize about things like childrearing ("We are houses for our children"). Nevertheless, it's an overall worthwhile read, one that fans of coming-of-age YA narratives should enjoy.
December 16, 2016
The Woman in the Wall
By Patrice Kindl
Patrice Kindl is an author of many books including The Woman in the Wall. She is a great author. She did a great job making this book feel more real than it is. The Woman in the Wall is about a shy girl, who is nearly invisible. I feel that this book would inspire little kids to be less shy and to open up. I'm personally not that shy but I can relate to this because Anna is a young girl going through life a little worried. She is trying to figure things out before something great happens.
I have always been a fan of books that are less real but more imaginary. You can tell Anna’s choices and her unique thoughts are almost as if it should be taking place in a realistic view rather than fantasy. Patrice Kindl wrote about the life of a little girl living in the passageways of her wall. I think this novel is a good fantasy that many will enjoy. This is a book that you could read in two or fewer hours but is a great way to spend that time. I think this is a very relatable book that many people could get hooked.
I feel like anyone that enjoys fantasy would like a book like this. There were parts where it was more realistic than fantasy, but those moments gave the book a better touch for those who like more of a realistic type of book. I think this is a very relatable book. Anna’s emotions and personality make it so easy to relate to her. This is a fun and different book to read. Everyone should experience reading this great novel that will leave you thinking “wow”.
By Patrice Kindl
Patrice Kindl is an author of many books including The Woman in the Wall. She is a great author. She did a great job making this book feel more real than it is. The Woman in the Wall is about a shy girl, who is nearly invisible. I feel that this book would inspire little kids to be less shy and to open up. I'm personally not that shy but I can relate to this because Anna is a young girl going through life a little worried. She is trying to figure things out before something great happens.
I have always been a fan of books that are less real but more imaginary. You can tell Anna’s choices and her unique thoughts are almost as if it should be taking place in a realistic view rather than fantasy. Patrice Kindl wrote about the life of a little girl living in the passageways of her wall. I think this novel is a good fantasy that many will enjoy. This is a book that you could read in two or fewer hours but is a great way to spend that time. I think this is a very relatable book that many people could get hooked.
I feel like anyone that enjoys fantasy would like a book like this. There were parts where it was more realistic than fantasy, but those moments gave the book a better touch for those who like more of a realistic type of book. I think this is a very relatable book. Anna’s emotions and personality make it so easy to relate to her. This is a fun and different book to read. Everyone should experience reading this great novel that will leave you thinking “wow”.
February 9, 2017
I first read this when I was in middle school and thought the idea of living in secret passageways inside an old Victorian mansion was the best idea ever. When I accidentally stumbled across it at the library I decided to re-read it just for nostalgia's sake. This book was written well enough that I was okay with finishing it, but it was frustrating. Now that I'm old and have more life experience, the heteronormativity in this book was annoying. The one thing I did enjoy was the ridiculousness of the main character's ability to stay hidden as a child, and the fact that she was able to shrink herself down to fit inside a purse -- even if that ability was never fully explored and then later inexplicably lost.
September 12, 2015
A very unusual young adult novel about a middle sister, Anna, who is so shy she retreats into the walls of her home rather than risk a stranger looking at her. I wasn't sure where this book would go at first. I didn't even think of Anna as a real person but as the aspect of shyness from her older sister, Andrea.
At age 7, Anna proves to be a master seamstress and carpenter. She redesigns the house so she can live in the walls without her family knowing the difference and spends 7 years, hiding. Puberty and notes from a boy bring her back into the world. I wish Kindl had written a different ending for this. Anna's romantic attachment to F didn't feel like a good enough reason for her to end her self imposed exile, not that that made much sense anyway.
Still, it was an interesting construction and the author did a good job of making a passive character intriguing.
Recommended.
At age 7, Anna proves to be a master seamstress and carpenter. She redesigns the house so she can live in the walls without her family knowing the difference and spends 7 years, hiding. Puberty and notes from a boy bring her back into the world. I wish Kindl had written a different ending for this. Anna's romantic attachment to F didn't feel like a good enough reason for her to end her self imposed exile, not that that made much sense anyway.
Still, it was an interesting construction and the author did a good job of making a passive character intriguing.
Recommended.
May 7, 2012
Ugh. Hated first half--or maybe third--of this book. Someone called this a metaphor for adolescence, and after reading that it was all I could see, and it irritated me. Unrealistic crap just to show how crappy it feels to be a kid like that, before and during awkward changes. Blech. But after F's first note, it got a hook in me and I was actually kinda interested in it. And thinking back, the beginning wasn't SO awful. Anyway, it got funny, and emotional for me, in a good way. And by the end, it had sped up to such a level of excitement that I couldn't put it down, and was squealing and giggling and holding my breath in turns and just loved it. But I can't forget how irritated I was with this book for a while, so this is at least temporarily four stars.
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December 15, 2021For years I tried to describe this book to people while sounding like an insane person in a fever dream. "There's this girl and she crawls into the walls in her weird old house, and then everyone forgets about her and she just creeps on everyone from inside the walls!"
But I couldn't think of the title or author so everyone gave me weird looks. It exists! Here it is! 1998! I remember that cover! Thank you Goodreads!
This book is fucking weird. 9 year old me thought so at the time and 32 year old me thinks so now. Who comes up with this as a concept? I have no idea how to rate it. I have no memory of whether it was well written or not, but I gotta hand it to the author, the concept is memorable. I hope no one ever writes a story with this premise ever again.
But I couldn't think of the title or author so everyone gave me weird looks. It exists! Here it is! 1998! I remember that cover! Thank you Goodreads!
This book is fucking weird. 9 year old me thought so at the time and 32 year old me thinks so now. Who comes up with this as a concept? I have no idea how to rate it. I have no memory of whether it was well written or not, but I gotta hand it to the author, the concept is memorable. I hope no one ever writes a story with this premise ever again.
February 4, 2018
This is such a weird book. Unforgettable, to be sure, but only because who else has ever had anything close to the idea of a little girl who just... disappears... into the walls of her house and her family is like "Did there used to be another daughter around? That is a genuine question because I might have just imagined her. Real kids usually make noise and have personalities and stuff, right? Ehhh, whatever."
Rating unchanged from the 3 stars I gave it in high school because I'm sure I thought, about the MC, "That's so me!" and "serious question would it be possible for me to also do this."
Rating unchanged from the 3 stars I gave it in high school because I'm sure I thought, about the MC, "That's so me!" and "serious question would it be possible for me to also do this."
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