Detail
Title: The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks #3) ISBN: 9780316601955Published March 30th 1999 by Back Bay Books (first published 1998) · Paperback 304 pages
Genre: Fiction, Womens Fiction, Chick Lit, Mystery, Contemporary, Romance, Adult Fiction, Adult, Novels, Book Club, Literature
Must be read
User Reviews
Julie
The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve is a 1999 Bay Back Books publication.
I read this book a long time ago, before I become a member of Goodreads and well before I started writing book reviews.
But, when I heard of Anita Shreve’s passing, this book came back to the forefront of my mind, as I recalled bits and pieces of it quite vividly.
Although I have so many books to review, with deadlines, no less, I couldn’t resist giving this book a second look.
This novel, when it was first released, benefited greatly from the press that resulted from Oprah Winfrey’s having selected it for her book club. However, initially, I wasn’t sure if it was my kind of book and didn’t immediately rush out and buy a copy at the peak of its popularity. But, eventually, my curiosity got the best of me. I never could have imagined the impact this book would have on me, or the way it would guide my reading habits from that time forward.
Briefly, for those who may not have read the book or just a quick refresher for those who have- Kathryn’s husband, Jack, is a pilot, and together they have a teenage daughter. Life is pretty good, and Kathryn has learned to accept the ebbs and flows within her marriage. But, when she gets the news a plane Jack was piloting exploded in midair, everything she thought she knew about her daughter, her husband and even herself is thrown into question. Was it a mechanical malfunction, or pilot error- or something far more sinister?
Jack’s occupation explains his absences from home, but it is an adjustment his family has had to learn to live with. His job also comes in handy when it comes to sustaining secrets and hiding things from his wife and daughter. Many may question how naïve Kathryn was, but I didn’t feel as though she buried her head in the sand. Of course, as the story unfolds, episodes from the past all click into place and Kathryn realizes she was naïve, perhaps complacent, was too trusting, too confident in her life, but didn’t she have the right to be? Or should she have remained in a state of hyper awareness at all times? Is is wrong to enjoy contentment?
Even now, with the passage of time, the emotions the book stirred in me the first time around, resurfaced once again, as strong as before, maybe even more so, even knowing everything that was going to happen in advance. The story still held my rapt attention and sucked me into Kathryn’s mind -numbing vortex as she stumbles across one shocking betrayal after another.
The suspense is still nearly unbearable at times, the characterizations firm, if not always likeable, and the tantalizing and teasing pacing, is genius.
The story does seem dated a little, at this point, and as a more jaded reader, I may have figured things out a lot quicker if I’d been reading it for the first time, but it is still a powerful heart wrenching novel of suspense and riveting family drama. I have read several other books written by Shreve over the years, but so far, although very well written, they didn’t quite manage to have the same effect on me as this one did.
4.5 stars rounded up
Debbie Petersen Wolven
Another bomb from Shreve. Her husband had a secret life...blah blah blah. She can't confront her grief and betrayal over finding this out, because he is dead. Then the usual fairy-tale ending for books of this genre...while Kathryn is grief-stricken, unkempt and unshowered and at her blubbery worst, a gorgeous guy is right there to fall madly in love with her! Yes, this happens *all* the time!
Margitte
BLURB
A pilot's wife is taught to be prepared for the late-night knock at the door. But when Kathryn Lyons receives word that a plane flown by her husband, Jack, has exploded near the coast of Ireland, she confronts the unfathomable-one startling revelation at a time. Soon drawn into a maelstrom of publicity fueled by rumors that Jack led a secret life, Kathryn sets out to learn who her husband really was, whatever that knowledge might cost. Her search propels this taut, impassioned novel as it movingly explores the question, How well can we ever really know another person?
I watched the movie many years ago and still remember it. The movie was more action-driven in a way, and less emotionally orientated than the book, although the ambiance of the book was perfectly captured. Kathryn Lyons mourned the idyllic life she has lost after learning about her husband's deceit. In the end she did not mourn her husband Jack, but the good life he had cheated them out of. They had a daughter together, who had to learn the truth about her father in the end and make peace with his good memories, as well as the legacy he left behind. Being a teenager, Maddy had to navigate the start of an adult life with a mother gone to Ireland, searching for Jack's alleged connection to the IRA and the smuggling of explosives between Boston and Ireland. She discovered much more than that.
I was in a mood for a placid, gentle read after a few high-voltage murder mysteries and literature. This was the perfect choice. Although the author's books lean heavily on the emotional turbulence it ignites in the reader, the stories are always a moral showground with many questions left for the readers to find answers to. The longer one lingers on the issues, the more intricate the answers become. Jack was a good man. Loving. Hardworking. He could have been anyone of us. But then he was not. Nothing in life is cut and paste or black or white. Between Kathryn's and Jack's version of the events, the facts had to be found, but it was not as easy as it sounded and Jack was dead ...
The book is beautiful. It is enhanced by the movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLx1F...
I've been wanting to read this book for so long. I'm so happy it finally happened. It was an Anita Shreve experience and I loved it.
Laura
This is one of those books you pick up in Costco when the line is really long and you need something to kill time, but then it accidentally gets rung up so you go ahead and read it. The back cover described it as “oddly gripping”, and the premise looked intriguing enough for me to actually buy the book on purpose: a wife delves into what really caused her husband’s plane to crash, only to find out...he was leading a double life!! In England!!! How could a book about loss, betrayal, and really big secrets fail to entertain? Unfortunately, none of the characters was even marginally appealing, and overall the story was just bleak and boring. There was even a contrived "love" story that, weirdly, made the story even grimmer.
Gemma
I’m afraid I didn’t feel any love for this. It dragged to begin with and virtually nothing happened for the first hundred pages. That wouldn’t have bothered me had the writing been inspired or the characters compelling. Unfortunately, for me, neither was the case. Katheryn, the wife who’s told her husband, the pilot, has died in an air crash, didn’t provide any of those exciting identification moments when you see something of yourself or a good friend eloquently arrested and made lucid. The story does eventually become more engaging but it’s always slow with lots of off-the-point dialogue and description, and I felt the author missed lots of opportunities to delve more deeply and more interestingly into the theme of how well do we know the person we are married to. Katheryn always seemed more of a device than a living character. I didn’t get any exciting insights into married life or grief. For me it was neither literary nor commercial fiction but struggled half way between the two. I’m a bit mystified why this novel is so popular.
Janet
This could be a quick read but is sometimes painful & I would have to put it down until I could read and savor a passage or two at a better time. I often read during lunch break at work & some books simply aren't meant to be read in an office setting - this is one of them. Kathryn, the pilot's wife, is so well written - you not only feel what she feels, you eventually know what she will feel before it is written for you. No doubt this is because I could be the pilot's wife; I could live her life - I have lived her life; I have had her experiences and doubts; I have had her trust and faith that life is as it is - and then it isn't. I have not gone through the pain of death and then life collapses but I have had life collapse in on itself and this story rings true. Shreve writes "Where was Kathryn to put these memories now? She was, she thought , like a woman after a divorce looking at a wedding dress. Could the dress no longer be cherished if the marriage itself had disintegrated?" My dress is now 30 years old and the marriage has been over for 17 - the dress (and the memories) are carefully wrapped & sit in a closet - the dress never comes out but occasionally the memories do. So my only complaint is the ending of the story - it ends too quickly and too neatly - Kathryn & the reader deserve more.
Deborah
She had a normal marriage. A good marriage. At least that is what she believed. “If you never suspected someone, she realized, you never thought to suspect.” There is beauty and eloquence in the portrayal of wife’s grief and betrayal in the aftermath of her husband’s death. Kathryn Lyons is woken up early one morning to learn that her husband, Jack, had just died in an airplane crash off the coast of Ireland. Jack was the pilot for the 104 crew and passengers on board. The union representative, Robert, is shielding her from the media and fallout, while her grandmother, Julia, is taking care of their traumatized 15-year-old daughter, Mattie. The author skillfully and gently unfolds the life of a family torn asunder by tragedy.
Here are some gems:
“Parents got hurt and swallowed it and watched their children leave them, incrementally at first, and then with head-spinning rapidity.”
“She studied him and added a small detail to a portrait that had been forming since the day he’d entered her house. It was what one did with people, Kathryn thought, form portraits, fill in missing brush strokes, wait for form and color to materialize.”
This is book I had in my personal library for a while, which I never got around to reading it until now and so glad I did. The library was closed, and I thought I would tackle some of my own books. I wondered why I had not seen any of her books published recently and did not realize that she died in 2018 at 71 years old of cancer. RIP.
Kerry
This was an airport "argh, I need something to read on a 4 hour flight" impulse buy. Since everything at the airport shop seemed to be on Oprah's list, there was no avoiding it. I don't know what is more annoying about this book, the supposed idylic settinig of New England, or the preposterous misunderstanding of the IRA. The whole thing is implausible, unless the protaginist is a major idiot... Oh, maybe that is not that big of an assumption.
jill
Shreve did a good job capturing the main character's grief and confusion, but the book just didn't hold my interest. It was kind of boring in the first two thirds, and then when the main character travelled to England and discovered the "twists," it just seemed kind of silly.
I was also annoyed by the main character falling in love with the union rep. I get that people bond under intense circumstances, but I hate that falling in love seems to be the go to literary reaction. There are other ways for people to bond, and for people to respond to trying times. This wasn't quite as annoying as Bel Canto, because at least it was only one couple and not everyone falling in love, but I still find that convention irritating.
I should have read this on my day off. I found myself kind of embarrassed to be reading a book about a pilot's wife at the airport. It felt too cliche, like I was fantasizing about being a pilot's wife or something. But it was kind of interesting to read something with characters dealing with the crazy aviation schedule. If only it hadn't been so damn melodramatic.
I left the book in the United operations room in Richmond, so maybe someone else will find it who'll like it better.
Deanna
I actually read this book quite a few years ago but have been trying to update my "read" books.
I have read a few books by Anita Shreve and for the most part I enjoy her writing and her stories.
She did a good job of showing Kathryn's grief and confusion making the reader feel as though this is something that they could be going through themselves.
However, at times the plot seemed somewhat confusing and undeveloped. Some confusion and questions that didn't seem as though there were fully answered.
All in all is was a decent book and I will likely check out more of Shreve's books.
Kerri
3.5
A well written novel that kept me interested until the last page. I really enjoyed the way it unfolded and the way things were revealed.
This is the second book by this author I have read and so far I have found them to be a pleasant experience, especially when I'm wanting a lighter read.
Cheri
I had read so many great things about this book, and I saw it in a used book store, so I bought it. I really didn't enjoy it.
Julie
This is my third Anita Shreve book and I am not sure if I am going to read any more of them. For the most part I enjoy her writing and her stories, but the endings are sometimes unbearable. Anyway, this book was another Oprah book. It was pretty short and I got through it very quickly. Plot summary: The wife of a pilot learns that her husband's plane has gone down and that he is dead. While dealing with all the initial shock as well as dealing with the grief of their 15 year old daughter, she learns that the media and the investigators are saying that it was suicide. In an effort to prove to everyone that Jack would never commit suicide as well as murder all those passengers, she learns that her husband had many secrets from her and is not the man she thought he was for all those years together.
This book made me feel sad. Is it so easy for people to live double lives? Wouldn't there be signs? Doubts? It definitely reinforced my beliefs that no matter how well you think you know someone or how long you are with them, you never know what they are thinking. You never know what someone is truly capable of. This book didn't do much to reinforce any sort of faith in humanity.
Also, the book was too short. The plot developments were not fully developed and there are a lot of unanswered questions. Things happened too easily without enough conflict. I wanted more and was denied. The other Shreve books I read were more satisfying.
Michelle
I got a great book from my friend, Kathran for Christmas, and I just finished reading it... The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve.
Shreve is a great writer... I love her language and use of words. I'm such a lover of language and the ways in which it can be swirled and whirled and encircle your mind making you want to read the same sentence over and over. Shreve is excellent at this task.
She makes you think. And I like thinking.
Right from the second page of the book she sets the essence of the whole book in motion...
"She took careful steps across the floor, as if moving too fast might set something in motion that hadn't yet begun."
To think that both the author and the main character, Kathryn Lyons, (the pilot's "wife,") are already in tune with the fact that this could be true makes me think of the many times when I, if I had been more in tune with what surrounded me, would or could have had the same feeling.
But, knowing does not change that. Knowing that getting a knock on the door in the middle of the night, meant almost certain dread to a pilot's wife, does not change that there is a knock at the door. Even not answering that door does not change what is on its other side.
The stages that Kathryn moves though are as textbook as anyone going through a similar circumstance. And the ease with which this happens is as gripping as it has been for me when I have faced a loss...
"And then she moved from shock to grief the way she might enter another room."
"But it amazed her the way the body kept moving forward, past the shock and the grief, past the retching hollowness inside, and kept wanted sustenance, kept wanting to be fed. It seemed unsuitable, like wanting sex."
"'I can't explain it,' Kathryn said. 'I feel as though I've temporarily lost Jack and I need to find him.'
'You're not doing to find him,' Julia said. 'He's gone.'"
There is a sincere representation of marriage in this book that really depicts in my opinion how a marriage evolves. There were words that rang true and were well written about the marriage of Kathryn and Jack, or what I would consider a typical American marriage...
"But actually she thought that any marriage was like radio reception: It came and went."
But, Kathryn's marriage does have its chinks. And they are legitimate. And Kathryn does begin to see the unseen.
"She doesn't know precisely what is wrong. She has only a vague feeling of vulnerability, a heightened sense of having been left alone for too many days."
The book is also filled with "dream bits," fragments, "like the fluttering glints of silver in the dark."
The message is clear, however... "Life could deal out worse than Kathryn had had, and worse than that."
It certainly can.
"A person is not who he had been the day before, Kathryn thought. Or the day before that."
No, we are not.
Good read... if you want it, I have it.
Coleen Guhl
Amazing book, there are many twists and turns that keep you interested and on your toes. I love the author's writing style. Again, this I read in two evenings; so you know it was good!