French Windows by Antoine Laurain

First published in France in 2023; published in translation by Pushkin Press on July 1, 2025

French Windows is a different take on the murder mystery genre. Dr. J. Faber is a psychoanalyst. His new client, Nathalia Guitry, tells him that she thinks she has screwed up her life. She feels “not fully alive” and characterizes her professional life as a failure.

Nathalia is a photographer but she no longer takes photographs. “‘When you can no longer do the job you love,” she explains, “you lose interest, and you don’t love it any more.” Faber asks her about the last photograph she took and she answers that it was a photograph of a murder. The topic of murder is not raised again until the story is about to end, leaving the reader to wonder how this could be a murder mystery. The answer: it mostly isn't.

Nathalia tells Faber that she spends much of her time looking out her window. She watches the people who live in the five floors of the wing across from her. She describes what she sees as “Stories. Lives. Life.”

Faber instructs Nathalia to write a story about the occupant of the ground floor and bring it with her to their next therapy session. “A true story, or one you’ve made up, it doesn’t matter which.” They will then repeat the process for the remaining floors until she has given Faber five stories. Faber hopes that she will reveal something about herself through the stories she tells of other people.

The bulk of the novel consists of Nathalia’s stories. One explains how the occupant of a flat adopted a new identity and became a YouTube influencer, a lifestyle coach who gives relationship advice, having achieved fame with the video If All Men Are Idiots then All Women Are Fools. After the session in which Nathalia discusses that story, Faber does some research and discovers that the story is apparently true.

The next story is about a successful, overweight cartoonist who buffs up to impress a woman who ignored him in high school. The third is about a man who must choose between his cat and a child who has a cat allergy. Another is the story of a man who had a near-death experience, sold all his goods, and traveled to Scotland to visit a tower that became his obsession. The last one, about a hypnotist, finally works its way back to the photograph of a murder.

Faber’s investigations of each story glue them together. The reader learns about Faber and his relationships with his wife and daughter, as well as his interest in old skeleton (passepartout) keys. It makes sense that a psychoanalyst would have a passion for keys, given his desire to unlock the hidden thoughts of his patients.

The story might be about the destiny we unconsciously shape. In the words of Jung: “Our destiny is the external manifestation of our internal subconscious conflicts.” Faber comes to understand Jung’s meaning through his interaction with Nathalia. Perhaps the reader will, as well.

Given its almost tangential nature, the mystery would be easily spoiled by discussing the murder that Nathalia photographed. The murderer’s identity necessarily comes as a surprise, given that the reader knows nothing about the murder until late in the story. While neither the murder nor the reveal are shocking, the story’s structure is quite clever.

French Windows might not appeal to mystery fans who want their mysteries to follow a familiar formula. The novel barely qualifies as a murder mystery, but the stories of the various apartment dwellers, while not particularly mysterious, are all engaging. As is Nathalia, a beautiful woman whose features Faber cannot recall after she departs. Faber’s wife wonders whether she is real or a figment of Faber’s imagination. Whether Faber’s wife is on the right track is a question for the reader to decide.

Although French Windows is a murder mystery in name only, it succeeds as a captivating glimpse of a psychoanalyst who needs to unlock his inner self before he can understand his relationships with his family and patients. Unpeeling the story’s deceptively complex layers might be a greater challenge than solving a murder.

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