Started with potential, couldn't keep my interest. Her husband was a schmuck.

The writing is beautiful, the characters complex and well-examined, and the plot gripped me to the very end. I particularly liked Julia the grandmother,: who confidently delivers advice based on her own invented facts, such as don't cry in public; you'll catch a cold, because the irritated mucous membranes will be susceptible to the alien microbes. She reminds me of me.

I really like this author, but I never would pick the book up because it was an OBC. Silly of me, cuz this book is well written like all her other books..but it is probably my favorite of Shreve's. Read it!!

Who could say what a man’s motivations were? […] could he have articulated his own Why? Could anyone? Again, she’d never know. She could only know what she imagined to be true. What she herself decided would be true.

I'm one of those people who bring too many books with them on vacation.
This year, we rented a villa in Italy -- and in the fine print on the website, there was a proud boast of bookshelves overflowing with reading material. Intrigued by the possibilities of random bookshelf browsing, I travelled light on books . . . and lived to regret it. Except for some thrillers (not my thing), nearly ALL of the books were written in Italian. This Anita Shreve book was one of the few exceptions. All of which is meant to explain why I ended up reading this book on my summer holiday, despite the fact that it is neither a classic nor recently published.

I've read a few of Shreve's books, and I certainly didn't find this one the most compelling of the lot, but she is a decent writer . . . and this does have a certain amount of drama and suspense which makes it worth reading. You kind of know where it's going, but then in some ways you really don't -- rather like the experience of "the wife" (and also the main character). It hinges on the idea (and I believe that this a favourite theme of Shreve's) that people, even best beloveds, can be startlingly and dramatically unknowable. It's not a comfortable theme, and there is quite a lot of sadness and suffering in this book. I did tire, really, of our heroine's ongoing grief as she struggles to contend with yet another blow to what she thought was the story of her marriage.

Funnily enough, not long after I read this book, I was at the pub with some friends and we got on the subject of people who maintain dual families/lives. In my mind, it's an uncommon and bizarre way to live, but apparently it's more common than one might suppose.

2.5 stars but rounded this up.
Overall: a somewhat engaging story that is fast paced. Overall, quite simple and predictable. Do not think I will read another book by this author.

The good: the plot was engaging enough to keep me reading. There were a few spots where I was kept guessing so this piqued the interest level. Characters were not bad, but definitely did not feel attached to anyone.

The bad: basic and predictable storyline. Characters were pretty blah and the ending was trite and predictable. Though I would not say this book was bad, I would not recommend it.

So...it's probably quite obvious that I'm back at work. I was averaging a book a week and now, three weeks have passed with no new reviews. A few people have even contacted me (which I loved) about what I was reading now. Sorry folks, the whole having to get up early to teach the children how to read is interrupting my own leisurely reading time. I'm hoping once the haze of the beginning lifts, I'll be able to get back into a better reading routing. For now, once or twice a month is probably our max. It saddens me, too.

Without further ado...


The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve was given to me in passing. A friend of mine was cleaning out her books and stumbled upon this. Because she was moving, she needed a place for the books to go and allowed me the chance to rummage through the selection. (Don't we love a friend like this!). I picked up The Pilot's Wife and thumbed through the pages, contemplating on whether or not I wanted to read a book that might be too close to home for me, after all, I am a pilot's wife. I decided to take a chance. I'm glad I did.

Kathryn Lyons fumbles in the dark when a late night knock comes at her door. (I'm not giving anything away here, this is on page one) There is no other way to interpret the stranger on the front porch. Her husband, Jack Lyons, has been killed in a plane accident. Immediately, she is sucked into a tornado of events. How will she cope? How will she tell her daughter? This opening scene is heart-wrechnig, especially if you are parent. You travel with Kathryn on this journey of loss, hoping that behind each turn there is some good news to follow.

As Kathryn, her daughter Mattie, and her grandmother Julia sift through the wreckage of their lives and deflect the horrible stories the media perpetrates during this difficult time, Kathryn begins to wonder if she ever knew Jack at all. Her daughter, a teenager handling the upset in her life the way most teenagers do - with deference and anger and grace depending on which day you catch her - pops off to her mom saying, "How well does anyone every really know anyone else, anyway?". Kathryn assures her daughter and herself that she knew Jack, she knew her husband, but as the novel unfolds, we find that is not true; her daughter's wisdom far beyond her own.

Kathryn Lyons is a character you follow closely as you read. I think this is because you want so much for her, you want just one page, one moment, to have good news; for her to wake up from this nightmare her life has become. Anita Shreve will tease you a bit, but in the end sometimes life is just not fair.

Anita Shreve writes expertly. I felt every emotion, good and bad. Every betrayal leaped off the page into my soul. It is such a well-written novel that I believe anyone would enjoy the reading. It is a women's fiction piece to me and I say this because it's not so literary one has to think all the way through, The Pilot's Wife is a novel with staying power. It was made into a movie in 2002, but didn't boast big name actors. I've not seen the film, and I probably won't; the story in the book was so strong I don't need a visible representation of this work.


The Pilot's Wife was selected for the Oprah Book Club and became an international best-seller.

Anita Shreve is an author I will read again. She's written several books, many of them best-sellers. She says "She loves the novel form and writes only in that genre...The best analogy I can give to describe writing for me is daydreaming," she says. "A certain amount of craft is brought to bear, but the experience feels very dreamlike."

This is a book I would recommend to anyone looking to read a solid story. There is just enough tenderness and love within the mystery and suspense to pull a reader forward, the book is just really good. It's that simple.


For more about Anita Shreve visit her website at http://www.anitashreve.com

The Time Travelers Wife, Gone Girl, The Silent Wife, and now the Pilot's Wife. Unintentionally my small collection on Goodreads has a very common theme!

Out of the three recently read- The Pilot's Wife is certainly my favorite. I was visiting my parents last weekend and picked this off of the top of a stack in their laundry room. I don't usually commit to a book without knowing more about it or hearing a recommendation but I'm really glad that I did!

I think its the most well written and you immediately get sucked into the characters and the story. Unlike the Silent Wife, this was a page turner for me. I read it in 3 or 4 nights. This book had twists and turns but they didn't feel cheap like they may have in Gone Girl. (Gone Girl felt kind of like a Hollywood best seller to me- good and entertaining and well written for sure with some great disturbing twists to throw you off but not something that would really stick with you)

The major theme- in my opinion, was the ability to create your own reality. In this way it was very similar to the Silent Wife. Perhaps Pilots wife is also about things not being as they seem- but the way that each chapter started with a snapshot of life as it was with Jack, meant that there was reality and there was the life that Kathryn wanted to live and she ignored certain details and moments between them to carry this vision out and mold her life to look as she wanted it to. And though she realizes that she was wrong all along, she also continues to do it when she decides at the end that Jack cried out for Mattie as his plane went down. Something she would never know for sure but that would help her cope and make sense of the life they had together.

Its like creating a photo album. You throw out the photos that aren't so good or aren't of a particularly good memory but keep the great ones. All of a sudden over time you forget the memories that aren't so good and your reality becomes what you see in the pictures.

Unlike Silent Wife, I finished the book feeling tremendous hope for Kathryn. It was a depressing book to say the least but so beautifully written, with fantastic imagery and underlying tones of hope. I actually finished it feeling satisfied and content and immediately recommended it to a friend.

I loved this book. You will not put it down. I wanted to kill her husband but he was already dead!

Although the first third of THE PILOT'S WIFE is depressing, it is so well written you won't want to give up on the book. Then it becomes unputdownable.

Kathryn's husband, a commercial airline pilot, is killed when his jet explodes over Ireland. So most of the beginning involves her dealings with the airline union and newspaper and TV reporters. She almost comes to depend on one union representative, Robert, in particular.

When Kathryn finds small clues that something suspicious may have been going on with her husband in England, THE PILOT'S WIFE becomes so suspenseful you may not want to eat or sleep until you finish reading it.

Anita Shreve is known for her portrayals of strong women. And Kathryn sure is that. She lives through a nightmare that keeps getting worse.

This was written pre-9/11. I wonder if the story would have been different 10 years later.

This was chick-lit in disguise. I feel dirty and tricked.

Although I probably am being harsh by giving it two stars, I don't really see too many good things about this book. The bits where Kathryn are at her house are far too dragged out. Shreve relies only on the 'feel' sensory to explain what her character is going through, rather than the 'show'. The important parts where things could have been really interesting--such as the funeral or the first Christmas without Jack--are glossed over and barely given a paragraph's mention.

The characters were predictable most times. Robert, especially, the basically flawless man who does one thing 'wrong' even though it's really not wrong at all. It's 'nobel.' I did like Mattie, though. And her line, 'but how do you ever know that you know a person?' was brilliant. I loved it. This book could have been summed up into a short story, maybe 10 pages long, and that line being the focus. It would have been stronger and more to the point.

I did enjoy Shreve's description and images. And her way of personifying objects with human emotions. She pulled that off well, which isn't an easy feat.

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.