The Woman in the Wall

Rating:
Summary: okay
Review: This is really a marvelous book. By the time you finish reading it, you sort-of wish you were Anna.
Anna is tremendously shy. But she is also tremendously clever and good with her hands. So, at the age of seven, she hides herself in her own house, building secret rooms and passageways throughout the old Victorian house she lives in.
Hidden for seven years, a mysterious love note delivered through a crack shatters her dark world.
A great read for kids under 15. Adults may enjoy it as well.



Rating:
Summary: A very moving story
Review: It's been some time since I read this book, but the feeling lingers that the story is a gem. Anna is shy beyond shy. She feels invisible, unloved and uncared for. She hides behind the walls of her house, until everyone just about forgets about her.

What a wonderful metaphor for those awkward years when we wish someone would notice us, and yet, we feel so shy or embarrassed or ugly, that we want to hide.

Anna's encounters with the outside world grow more and more alluring until she begins to feel it's impossible to continue hiding. Her awakening is triumphant.

I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: The Woman in the Wall-great!
Review: Millions of billions of trillions of gazillions of paperback kid books are produced every year. And of these, 99% are just awful. Really terribly written wish fulfillment stories in which the characters are poorly fleshed out, the prose is repugnant, and the book itself a minor (or major) disgrace to that author. Which is why �The Woman In the Wall� is so wonderfully extraordinary. Patrice Kindl has taken a plot that millions of children would be able to identify with and has fleshed it out, given it new life and verve, and written a fiction story that I would have KILLED to read at the age of nine or ten. This is a wonderful and little acknowledged tale.

Anna is shy. Not the kind of shy where people blush when they�re spoken to in public by strangers. More the kind of shy where people would rather build an entire world within their own home so as to avoid coming into contact with even their most beloved family members. When young Anna is told that she�ll have to attend school soon, she uses her wits and cunning to fashion a living space for herself within the walls of her home. It is only when she finds a mysterious love letter pushed underneath one of the walls of her home that she must decide whether to make contact, or whether to continue to hide away.

The premise is fairly light. Any child that has ever felt a need to blend in with their surroundings will gravitate to such a tale. But Kindl has actually gone a step further. This is also a story of growing from childhood into adolescence. As Anna grows and learns, so too does her own body. She finds herself a young teenager with hormones just as raging as any other girl�s. Furthermore, in the course of this relatively short story (my edition was a scant 185 pages) Anna learns not only to confront the world but also to deal with the disappearance of her own father. The book is an allegory for growing up and making the world notice you. It is also the tale of how, for many, childhood is not a time to revel in, but a time to avoid until you reach an age where things are just a little better. Kindl discusses all these topics AS WELL as working in a clever lunar moth metamorphosis metaphor as well. All this, and it�s a fun read.

Someday I will write a list of the 100 children�s books every human being should at least have a passing understanding of. �The Woman In the Wall� will not be number one on that list. It will not be number two. It certainly won�t make it into the top 20. But it will be on that list, and anyone who has ever felt the insanity of adolescence would do well to pick it up, read it through, and discuss it with their friends.

Rating:
Summary: Happy walls, a fortress steep and mighty
Review: Millions of billions of trillions of gazillions of paperback kid books are produced every year. And of these, 99% are just awful. Really terribly written wish fulfillment stories in which the characters are poorly fleshed out, the prose is repugnant, and the book itself a minor (or major) disgrace to that author. Which is why 'The Woman In the Wall' is so wonderfully extraordinary. Patrice Kindl has taken a plot that millions of children would be able to identify with and has fleshed it out, given it new life and verve, and written a fiction story that I would have KILLED to read at the age of nine or ten. This is a wonderful and little acknowledged tale.

Anna is shy. Not the kind of shy where people blush when they're spoken to in public by strangers. More the kind of shy where people would rather build an entire world within their own home so as to avoid coming into contact with even their most beloved family members. When young Anna is told that she'll have to attend school soon, she uses her wits and cunning to fashion a living space for herself within the walls of her home. It is only when she finds a mysterious love letter pushed underneath one of the walls of her home that she must decide whether to make contact, or whether to continue to hide away.

The premise is fairly light. Any child that has ever felt a need to blend in with their surroundings will gravitate to such a tale. But Kindl has actually gone a step further. This is also a story of growing from childhood into adolescence. As Anna grows and learns, so too does her own body. She finds herself a young teenager with hormones just as raging as any other girl's. Furthermore, in the course of this relatively short story (my edition was a scant 185 pages) Anna learns not only to confront the world but also to deal with the disappearance of her own father. The book is an allegory for growing up and making the world notice you. It is also the tale of how, for many, childhood is not a time to revel in, but a time to avoid until you reach an age where things are just a little better. Kindl discusses all these topics AS WELL as working in a clever lunar moth metamorphosis metaphor as well. All this, and it's a fun read.

Someday I will write a list of the 100 children's books every human being should at least have a passing understanding of. 'The Woman In the Wall' will not be number one on that list. It will not be number two. It certainly won't make it into the top 20. But it will be on that list, and anyone who has ever felt the insanity of adolescence would do well to pick it up, read it through, and discuss it with their friends.

Rating:
Summary: Definately not your normal book
Review: My teacher gave me this book because i was craving something different. Wow. It definately was.

A 7 year old girl, Anna, is terribly shy, but also, she is invisible. Noone but the family knows she exsists. When her mother told her she had to go to school, She retreats into the walls of the house. Over the years, she build passage ways and other rooms. Anna is extremely intelligent and all she does is sew and build things. Over the years her family starts to forget about her. 7 years later, when she finds a note written by the mysterious "F" and learns that her family might move away, she must decide whether to come out or not. Over the years she lives within the walls she grows into a woman and someone everybody can see.

This was a pretty cool book, but i definately would not reccomend it for guys.

Rating:
Summary: Wall Power!!!
Review: The Woman in the Wall was a strange but very clever book. I read the book in a day before I realized it. The main character is Anna. She is a very shy little seven year old who sets herself away from family and the rest of the world. As years go by, she builds her own little life behind a wall in her family home. She is invisible to everyone but she makes her presence known. Anna is extremely handy around the house and is a perfect seamstress. This wonder girl almost seems too good to be true. Anna feels a certain amount of power by living behind the wall. She has peep holes in the walls where she spies on her family and their friends, nevertheless they cannot see her. In reading this book it is very unrealistic, yet very lifelike at the same time. Quirky little Anna just brings excitement and wonder to the novel and keeps the readers turning the pages. I would love to read a sequel to this book and find out what became of the little wall flower.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This book was great! I really liked it and found it very interesting. It kept me wanting to read. It was about a girl who was very shy and and when she had to go to school she moved into her walls. She stayed in there for around 7 years and then she started getting love letters. After a few letters she was discovered and started living a normal teenage life. This is a fascinating book about friendship, identity, and love.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This book was great! I really liked it and found it very interesting. It kept me wanting to read. It was about a girl who was very shy and and when she had to go to school she moved into her walls. She stayed in there for around 7 years and then she started getting love letters. After a few letters she was discovered and started living a normal teenage life. This is a fascinating book about friendship, identity, and love.

Rating:
Summary: Hiden Within the Walls
Review: This book was great! It is about a little girl named Anna who is very shy and likes to hide. One day Anna feels that she is at high risk when her mom wants to send her to school and to see a physchologist. To overcome her risk Anna decides to build a secret world inside the walls of her house. When Anna is in the walls she watches her famly and her older sister, Andrea's parties.I think that this book was really interesting. It is a book for people who enjoy reading books that are different. I recommend this book if you don't like scary books, but you do like a little bit of mystery. It is the type of book you cannot put down once you start, you have to keep reading.

Rating:
Summary: Makes you stop and think
Review: When I first picked up the book I instantly thought it was a plain, old fiction book. But when you begin to read it makes you stop and consider the fact that this may almost be a fantasy book. The girl is described to be even smaller than her younger sister's doll, and she is accidently placed inside a purse. This makes the idea that she is smaller the 12 inches at 5 yrs. old extremely possible. As she reaches seven yrs. old and her mother mentions school, she instantly cooks up a plan and begins construction. You are amazed at the detail that the writer goes into about the girl's secret rooms and passages, and day by day the family sees less and less of the girl until finally they wonder if she had ever been born. This book was both captivating and enticinge, I would recommend it to any age.