Rating: 
Summary: An intelligent, absorbing read
Review: Set in the same house which appears in her more recently published "Fortune's Rocks", "The Pilot's Wife" is the novel that placed Shreve in the Oprah 's massive book universe. The story centers on a woman who must deal with the loss of her husband's life and then the realization that he led a double existence totally exclusive of her.*** It's an intriguing premise, but it doesn't allow much room for the rich texture and atmosphere generated in "Fortune's Rocks." To be fair, the latter is an Edith Wharton-like tome, whereas "The Pilot's Wife" is a contemporary story that would make an intelligent film, the kind starring Michelle Pfeiffer (who was in the adaptation of another Oprah pick, "The Deep End of the Ocean"). Liking one book, readers may not like the other, but both show Shreve developing a surer hand and an increasingly impressive dramatic range. *** Always, there is a sense that the central character must cross (and often re-cross) logistic distances in order to achieve emotional discovery or fulfillment. Shreve accomplishes this with a lot of grace and modern sensibilities, leaving the paths of self-righteousness and sentimentality to romance novelists.
Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking
Review: Ms Shreve offers us a naked look at the range of emotions that are elicited from Kathryn Lyons, the wife of Jack, a commercial airline pilot who has just died in a crash in transit over the Irish Sea. We feel Kathyrn's shock, her pain. We move into her memories easily through the conduit of Ms Shreve's simple fluid language and sense her growing, albeit bewildered anger as she realizes that the man she was married to was more a stranger than the man she built her life around for more than a decade.
I will not spoil the story for anyone, but I will recommend it. I ask that as Ms Shreve enjoys setting her tales in the same New England location and tying them together with the mention of characters from her other novels, that she consider writing a sequel to this one, where the main character is Maddie, Jack and Kathyrn's daughter and the plot revolves around her eventual awareness and subsequent meeting of Deidre and Dermot.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but predictable
Review: This was a very well written book, which I was unable to put down once I started it. I read it in just one sitting. However, it was VERY predictable.
Anita Shreve is an excellent writer, and I enjoyed her characters, but I knew the ending once I had read the first chapter.
And, not to be too picky, but I thought that the reason that Jack did what he did (don't want to give away the plot!) wasn't believable. I mean, I get that he lived 2 different lives, but the affiliation with the group (again, don't want to give it away to those who haven't read it yet) doesn't make much sense...and it wasn't explained because from the point of view of Kathryn, there was no known explaination after his death.
All in all, it was a good read...but not something that I would run to buy. Borrow it from a friend on a rainy Sunday afternoon...
Rating: 
Summary: Fine book with excellent plot and dialogue
Review: Having previously become an Anita Shreve fan as a result of listening to her WHERE OR WHEN, I was glad when a friend lent me THE PILOT'S WIFE . . . this novel was equally as good . . . it is the story of a woman in what seemed like a happy marriage; i.e., until she receives a late-night knock that lets her know her husband has died in a crash . . . the resultant publicity forces her to seek the truth about her husband and the rumors that he led a secret life. Shreve handles dialogue as well as any writer I've read in a long
time . . . she also manages to pack a lot of plot into few
pages . . . among the passages that caught my attention:
But actually she thought that any marriage was like radio reception: It came and went. Occasionally, it--the marriage, Jack--would be clear to her. At other times, there would be interference, a staticky sound between them. At those times, it would be as though she couldn't quite hear Jack, as though his messages to her were drifting in the wrong direction through the stratosphere. What possible answers can any man give to the accusation that he hasn't recently told his wife that she is beautiful? She thinks to herself. That he has simply forgotten? That in fact he thinks it all the time, but just doesn't say it? That he thinks she is desperately beautiful right that very minute? That night, Kathryn and Jack make love as they have not done in months--with a ragged edge, as though playing out the rest of the scene with open mouths and small bites, locked thighs and pinned wrists. And the voracious momentum of that night changes, for a time, the tenor of their marriage, so that they look more often into each other's eyes as they pass in the hallway, trying mutely to say something meaningful, and kiss each other with more enthusiasm whenever they meet, in this house outside by the cars or even, several times, in public, which pleases Kathryn. But after a while, that too passes, and she and Jack go back to normal, as they have been before, which is to say that they, like all the other couples Kathryn has ever known, live in a state of gentle decline, of being infinitesimally, but not agonizingly, less than they were the day before.
Rating:
Summary: A Light, Page Turner for Your Next Vacation
Review: "The Pilot's Wife" is definitely a fast, page turner of a book and my first experience with Anita Shreve. If you aren't looking for a deep, complex book to sink your teeth into, then this is a good book for you. I was intrigued by its compelling concept and the beginning was auspicious. Though I found myself reading through the book quickly, in the end The Pilot's Wife was disappointingly predictable. My book group picked this one up because of its Oprah recommendation, but across the board we all expressed our disappointment in the weak characterization of the protagonist & the predictability of the last third of the book. Then again, we discussed the book as a story rather than an entree into a discussion of secrets & "how well do you really know the people around you." I had the impression that the author wrote this expressly to resell as a movie script, though I would peg it more as a "Lifetime" movie of the week rather than a big screen adaptation. With that said, I would still recommend "The Pilot's Wife" for those times when you may need to check out of the story for awhile, then pick it again without using much brain power such as a book on tape, or "by the pool" vacation book, though of course, not while you are on an airplane.
Rating:
Summary: How well can you really know a person?
Review: How well can you really know a person? This theme is addressed time and time again in this book and as I read further on into the book this question kept flashing, like a neon sign, in my head. In the book The Pilot's Wife, a woman by the name of Kathryn Lyons finds out that her husband, a pilot, had just died in a plane crash. As she tries to uncover exactly what happened to her husband and to the plane, she begins to discover things about her husband that she wasn't prepared for or that she did not see coming.
As cliché as it seems the story was very interesting to the point where I did not want to put the book down. I tried to read as fast as I could because I was anxious to see what was going to happen next. But unfortunately what I was disappointed to find in the first part of the story were chapters of some flashbacks to the past that were unnecessary. Some of the flashbacks, I think, worked well to show how great life WAS for Kathryn and her family before the accident, but others just seemed out of place and somewhat ruined some of the moments of suspense. Anne Shreve painted great pictures of the characters and the different settings in the story as she described each of these things very well.
As a result of the many rumors that were floating around about her husband, Kathryn decides to get to the bottom of everything and tries to find out who her husband really was. What she finds at the end of story was a bit predictable, but the twist in the plot made me question the relationships in my life and how well I knew each of the people I consider myself very close to. This story makes a person think, and for that reason I recommend the book.
Rating:
Summary: Decent book, predictable storyline
Review: Well as the title says the book was good, but the storyline was just too predictable. From the start I figured out what would happen in the end. I've read a lot of books very simlar to this book and seen a lot of movies with the same typical storyline. Someone dies and they find out they had another life outside of the one so many people knew. This is one of those books that is a fast read but I don't see myself reading it again.
Rating:
Summary: Do you really know your loved ones
Review: Yes. This was a great book. Intelligent read and disturbing. How safe are you in your personal realtionships, how well do you know your loved ones. It was disturbing to me how easy maybe, conceivable it could be that a loved one could lead such a double life, and one could be none the wiser. This book really brought this out. Made me think things I hadn't considered before.
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't put it down...
Review: The kind of book you pick up and never want to put down, even if it means to go to sleep... Two days later, I was done! I highly recommend this novel, it keeps you on your toes and makes you think... do we really know the people in our lives, even the ones who are close to our hearts? Hmmm... and what if...
Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Engaging book and easy to read
Review: This was a nice book to interject between 2 heavy novels. The Pilot's Wife tells a story of a woman married to a pilot who goes down with his plane (this happens in the first couple of pages, so I'm not blowing anything big here). The rest of the book follows the widowed woman's journey finding out a whole other life about her husband that she didn't know existed. The book will keep you engaged (easy to get engaged also), and provides an easy read. Refreshing after reading a very heavy novel.
|
