This was a gripping read. I've been looking for a while for a novel that could totally steal me from my life. This was it! I adored the whimsical prose, the reversals. Several times I had to put it down to catch my breath. A wonderful book that I can only recommend

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!

I did really like this book although I felt very uneasy about it considering Josh was overseas at the time. It is a story about a woman who has no knowledge about her husband's (who is a pilot) double life he is leading with another woman. He has a whole other family and the book is about her process of finding out about this other side of her husband's secret life. I did really like it, but probably would have enjoyed it more had I not been away from my own husband at the time!

Katharine Lyons is devastated when her husband's plane crashes and everyone on board is killed. Since her husband, Jack, was the pilot, the investigation for the cause of the crash is focused on him. Her whole life is upended when it is suggested that he committed suicide. Katherine has many questions but sadly she learns that her husband had many secrets. A compelling story that is a bit of a mystery and a lot about relationships, marriage, honesty, and grief.

"But how do you ever know that you know a person?"

It hits you ever so suddenly, that life itself can be so variable...it can change any moment. Suprising to know that you fall into a blissful sleep only to be jerked rudely awake one fine day to find your life completely fallen apart. Thus is the strangeness of life - change is the only constant. One moment you bask in the comfort of normalcy, next moment you realise you couldn't have been more wrong. This story is an eye-opener to all of us fools around. However, the human mind is a funny thing, it chooses to accept only as it deems fit. Very-well crafted.

This book held my attention with twists & surprises although the ending was sudden.
The author describes the emotional turmoil of grief from the loss of a loved one realistically.

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.

Published in 1998, and chosen as an Oprah's Book Club pick in 1999, I did not read "The Pilot's Wife," by Anita Shreve, in the years when it was sold in every mainstream bookstore.

In 2009, I picked the book up after an aspiring author told me they were trying to emulate Anita Shreve's prose and content, and named "The Pilot's Wife" as the best of her work. I couldn't get into the first five pages, and DNF'd.

In 2024, I suddenly remembered trying to read this cluster-mess many years ago, and added it to my list of market research reads.

I'm glad I did that, though I really hated the experience of reading this book. I can understand why this book was so popular, but that knowledge always seems like cold comfort after reading something this loathsome.

"The Pilot's Wife" is a one-star read for me personally.

Three stars as a market research read. This novel was definitely not written for me.

I'll include some spoiler thoughts below.

*********************

**Spoiler warning**

The prose style of this novel was so very similar to Jodi Picoult's writing style that I could not tell the difference. Since I had just recently finished "The Book of Two Ways" before reading "The Pilot's Wife," it kept startling me how many plot elements were similar, with plane crashes, teenage daughters, secret children, secret loves, and all the rest.

I do not like Picoult's writing style and I definitely don't enjoy Shreve's prose style, either. They are such twins of each other that I think of Shreve like the OG to Picoult's bestselling author career.

These authors absolutely write "women's fiction," and while I am sorry that both authors find the term to be so pejorative, it is an accurately descriptive one.

All of the plot beats of this book belong to the romance genre. "The Pilot's Wife" is structurally a romance, one with the plot contrivances of a mystery clumsily -- and quite fantastically -- overlaid.

The protagonist, Kathryn Lyons, is 33 when the novel begins. The reader is left to infer that Kathryn is still stunningly beautiful, and that this is why the union rep who comes to her door -- Robert Hart (who I heard on the audiobook as the ur-obvious "Robert Heart"/OTP du jour) -- is immediately taken with her, and behaves in the most loving way toward her throughout the length of the novel.

Kathryn's father's name is "Bobby" -- and it was not lost on me that the OTP's name is the same as her father's (Robert). In real life, Anita Shreve's father was a pilot for Delta Airlines, just as she wrote Kathryn's husband as being a pilot (for the fictional "Vision" airlines). So there's a lot of great fodder here for how to read the unconscious mind and unconscious longings into an author's work of fiction.

It is immediately revealed in the novel that the plane's black box was recovered, and that authorities suspect that Jack carried a bomb onboard the plane. The CIA and the FBI would have been searching the house, if that were the case. But since "The Pilot's Wife" exists outside reality, then the strictures of reality need not apply.

Jack Lyons (age 51 or 52 at the start of the book) comes across as a total P.O.S. in this novel, and yet no one ever calls him one, not even Kathryn. It is revealed that he basically started a relationship with her in the most predatory way: he was 33 years old (the same exact age as Kathryn is at the start of the book), and Kathryn was only 18 years old when they first meet.

Jack walks into her grandmother's antique store, where Kathryn is working, and immediately wants to date her. His dialogue in this scene is as unrealistic as it is cringe. Later, the reader discovers that both of Kathryn's lifelong-drunken parents had recently died in the same car crash, which is why she had dropped out of college and come to stay with her grandmother.

Kathryn was an emotionally broken girl of 18 when Jack meets her, and he immediately knocks her up. They get married by a justice of the peace when she is a few months pregnant with their now-15-year-old daughter, Mattie.

Kathryn's grandmother never saw anything wrong with Jack... and this is why women need feminism. Because authors like Anita Shreve were penning this stuff into novels in the 1990s and no one was calling this out.

A flashback scene of a fight is included in the story, from anywhere between one to five years before the novel begins, and Jack comes across as the most magnificent asshole. But his behavior is never called out for what it is, and Kathryn never expresses rage over any of it. As a reader, it means I'm left feeling a lot of emotions that are never acknowledged, spoken, validated, or even hinted at anywhere in the narrative.... And that kind of writing is Super Bad News for me, all around.

This level of cluelessness is what really makes Kathryn sound like a child of about four or five throughout the length of the novel, not a grown woman in her early 30s.

According to the rules of patriarchy, women are "not allowed" to express anger, only men are, so I do understand why Kathryn isn't allowed to "have anger" in this book. But I still need to say that she would be feeling a lot of anger, regardless of what "is or isn't allowed" in American culture.

Of course, Jack is lured into criminal activity by a homewrecker named Muire, who is already engaging in criminal activity when the two first hook up.

And of course, Muire goes into full disclosure mode (FDM) regarding her criminal activity in front of Kathryn and a man she has never met before (Robert), even though Muire knows she can go to prison for this and she has two young children to raise. This behavior is so unbelievable that I think watching the 1987 comedy film "Spaceballs" is more realistic than reading this book.

Jack allowed someone to put a bomb into his flight bag, without even looking in his bag before he boarded the flight, and this led to the deaths of 104 people. That kind of ignorant behavior is never called out in the novel, not by Kathryn or anyone else. Kathryn calls it "betrayal" -- that Jack was "betrayed" by people he trusted.

But the truth is, Jack was a fool. He was also a liar, an inveterate liar. His behavior was despicable.

Then the novel ends with Kathryn lying to her daughter about her father's behavior. Kathryn continues to withhold the truth from Mattie: that Mattie has two half-siblings, that her father had a second wife and a second family in London.

Instead of the book standing on any kind of moral grounding -- regarding Jack's lying and his utterly traumatizing betrayal -- the book morally uplifts Kathryn's choice to continue lying to her daughter, and wants the reader to view this choice as good parenting.

For the record, I don't think a lie on that level would have brought Kathryn and Mattie closer together, as this novel depicts. I think Kathryn's choice to keep lying to Mattie would've just torn them further apart. But that is a reality-based view that really has no place in this total fantasy novel.

In short, I hated reading this book and I would recommend it to no one.

As a market research read, I understand that this novel is working as an emotional allegory for all of the unspoken, forbidden rage that women feel when they discover a husband's betrayal.

The story gives readers a wish fulfillment conclusion that simply removing a wedding ring is enough to "heal" this level of trauma: a couple of weeks after Jack's death, Kathryn drops her wedding ring in the sea and states that she has now been "relieved of the burden of love" she had for Jack.

Like, it would be nice I guess if life were that easy. But the truth is, Kathryn would need a ton of therapy and mental health support if what takes place in this novel were true. Jack preyed upon her and used her, and the scar that would leave would be significant. Mattie would also need therapy, counseling, group support, all of that kind of stuff in order to regain any kind of trust in her family unit.

I think the popularity of this novel had a lot to do with the fact that there weren't a lot of books dealing with this kind of women's experience: the experience of being a woman whose husband has committed this kind of betrayal.

I think the book handled the topic with the same depth of insight as a piece of two-ply toilet paper, but it sure made the author a boatload of money, so my opinion is definitely in the minority.

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.

I had zero expectations going into this and I found it very gripping. Couldn't put it down

I will read more for this author.

Five stars.

This story explores how well we can ever actually know someone else. The setting is Ely, New Hampshire, where Katherine Lyons has just found out her husband, Jack, an airplane pilot, was killed in a crash. Not only does she now have to live with the knowledge that her husband has died, but she soon finds evidence that Jack had lied to her about his family. What else might he have kept secret from her and their daughter, Mattie? One of Oprah’s Picks, and I think this is one of the best so far. It was a great mystery.

This was every bit what I thought it would be, with a slight additional twist at the end, but I enjoyed it more than I expected. The writing was really well done, and the depiction of grief was raw and honest. Probably won't return to it, but glad I read it.