Oprah Book Club® Selection, March 1999: With five novels to her credit, including the acclaimedThe Weight of Water, Anita Shreve now offers a skillfully crafted exploration of the long reach of tragedy inThe Pilot's Wife. News of Jack Lyons's fatal crash sends his wife into shock and emotional numbness:
Kathryn wished she could manage a coma. Instead, it seemed that quite the opposite had happened: She felt herself to be inside of a private weather system, one in which she was continuously tossed and buffeted by bits of news and information, sometimes chilled by thoughts of what lay immediately ahead, thawed by the kindness of others ... frequently drenched by memories that seemed to have no regard for circumstance or place, and then subjected to the nearly intolerable heat of reporters, photographers and curious on-lookers. It was a weather system with no logic, she had decided, no pattern, no progression, no form.
The situation becomes even more dire when the plane's black box is recovered, pinning responsibility for the crash on Jack. In an attempt to clear his name, Kathryn searches for any and all clues to the hours before the flight. Yet each discovery forces her to realize that she didn't know her husband of 16 years at all. Shreve's complex and highly convincing treatment of Kathryn's dilemma, coupled with intriguing minor characters and an expertly paced plot, makesThe Pilot's Wife really take off.
By: ladybug74 This was a great book and the first of many Anita Shreve books that I have enjoyed since reading this one. The wife of a pilot is notified that her husband was killed in a plane crash, then finds out that his travels as a pilot allowed him to live a double life.
Flying in and out of life I will never forget this book. The day after I read it, Alaska Airlines crashed practically outside my window in the Pacific Ocean off the Channel Islands taking the lives of all passengers and flight crew. The county was in shock from the disaster. As the days went by, the newspapers began to profile the victims, their lives and their families. It was heartbreaking to see the family members trying to cope with the sudden loss of their loved ones. We couldn't help but wonder how they got through such an event, it was all so horrific.
While I was touched by this book, it was obvious that the impact of the crash would force me to take a more dramatic view of the story. I couldn't help but wonder how the survivors were coping with such a shattering experience.
Hopefully, none of survivors were having to discover that their loved ones were living a double life like the wife, Kathryn in the book finds out about her husband who was also the pilot of the plane. As Kathryn moves through the grieving process, events unfold to lay open the guarded secret her husband kept hidden from her all those years.
Kathryn finds herself reevaluating everything about their life together. She reviews events, memories and feelings, trying to discover the signs and symptoms of the beginning of betrayal and the end of trust.
Initially engages, then goes limp I started this book and was hooked--I couldn't stop. Shreve has a nice way of building tension as the story unravels. About halfway through the book, I began feeling impatient with the characters and the action. True, eventually she literally goes to the ends of the Earth to figure out what happened(it's too late by then, of course). But what kind of wife NEVER calls her husband at what is essentially his second home (the airline apt. in London)? That stuck out as incredibly unlikely(almost laughable). This could have been a point Shreve was making; an example of the breakdown of intimacy. I think it's a mistake, because it made me think Kathryn was an absolute fool, and my sympathy for her waned considerably. Shreve had led me to believe that Kathryn was a warm, loving and sharply intelligent woman. As the book went on, I felt that she was naive, married too young, someone who felt that her husband "knew best", and never pushed him regarding her needs in the relationship. I think there is a good final message in this book about the importance of intimacy and trust, but I believe it comes at the expense of the central character. I don't think that was Shreve's intention, because she seems too accomplished to allow that to happen.Are wives really that dumb and blind? This would have been a better book if the protagonist (the pilot's wife) wasn't so unbelievably stupid. She and her husband essentially lead separate lives, for years. This is because of his job as a pilot (supposedly). She just goes with the flow and never stops to think if things should really be THAT separate. So....She is easily deceived on a consistent basis, and for a long period of time...yet was totally surprised when the truth was revealed after her husband dies. Real, average women aren't that stupid.
