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Summary: A story of love, death, deceit and forgiveness
Review: This is a wonderful story of life. It has everything from love, death, deceit to forgiveness. I enjoyed they way the story transitioned from the past to the present lives of the characters. I often give away books that I have read ... this one I will keep.
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Summary: The Pilot's Wife
Review: It has been a long time since I read this book. I do not remember the details of the book but I loved it. It held my attention (which is not easy to do). It touched my emotions is a way that other books have not been able to do.I remember it was easy reading and the book is not too long.
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Summary: Read It in One Day
Review: To read "The Pilot's Wife" is to be taken on an emotional journey through Kathryn Lyon, a sudden widow who finds that there were more secrets to her husband than she had originally known. Although simplistic in its writing style, beneath the words is a sweeping undercurrent of feeling that carries the reader on a tide to which one cannot swim back to reality until it is completely finished. Put aside a day for this one. Easily believable in the beginning, I have to forewarn some of the audience that the novel changes into somewhat of a "soap-opera" exposition, the story-line weakening in its melodramatic revelation. But Anita Shreve shows a particularly strong understanding of sudden grief, of its stages and transitions. Also strong is the storyline between Kathryn and her teenage daughter, Mattie. The difficult mother-daughter adolescent phase is written almost too honestly, as though Shreve has incorporated her own familial struggles here (and perhaps she has, for in the acknowledgments, she does thank her daughter for "helping to shape the portrait of Mattie.") Not recommended for men, this is a good read for women. It could be compared to watching a movie that plays on the Lifetime Channel; an indulgent viewing with a chocolate bar on the side.
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Summary: An emotionally compelling study of grief and loss.
Review: Even though I found that this book packed a heavy emotionally wallop and I couldn't get it off my mind for days after I read it, it is difficult for me to explain how such a simple plot could be so compelling. Early one morning a pilot's wife, Kathryn, is awakened by a representative from the pilot's union coming to tell her that her husband's transatlantic flight blew up in mid-air. There are no survivors. Shreve does a remarkable job of portraying the initial stages of her grief and the complex effect the crash has on her relationship with her teenage daughter. As Kathryn is struggling to coming to grips with the fact that her husband is irrevocably gone, the cockpit flight recorders are discovered and suggest that her husband was somehow responsible for the catastrophe. Kathryn is certain that her husband was not suicidal, but as she begins to sort through his belongings, she relizes how little she really knew him. Her husband regularly piloted a flight to London, and she goes there to investigate what he was doing the night before the fatal crash. I won't reveal any more, but as you read the book you will not be the least bit surprised at what she discovers. Even knowing where the story was leading, the emotional impact I felt upon her discovery was shocking. The moral of the story is a simple one, but Shreve's masterful writing makes learning the lesson a very intense experience.
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Summary: Haunting Book
Review: I was not going to read this, as it is an Oprah book, and many of her books are dark and depressing. Although this was a sad book, I found it to be a gripping and emotional story. From the very first paragraph, which begins with a late night knock on the door, I was unable to stop reading. This book was a very fast read, and was completed on a cross country plane trip. Kathryn and Jack Lyons have a good marriage, a nice home and a happy teen age daughter. Then one night the plane Jack is piloting crashes, and along with the plane, Kathryn's whole life comes crashing down around here. A haunting story that makes us all wonder how well we know our spouse or significant other, or for that matter anyone we are close to. How much can a person hide from someone on a daily basis? And how often to we turn a blind eye to what we don't really want to see? I devoured this book and look forward to reading more by Shreve.
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Summary: A MOSAIC OF AN EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE...
Review: This is a beautifully written novel about a happily married woman, Kathryn Lyons, whose husband, Jack, is an airlines pilot. They have a teenage daughter named Mattie. They live in her lovely childhood home in Ely, New Hampshire. For sixteen years life has been good. Then her husband goes down with his plane, just ten miles off the coast of Ireland, and ever so slowly the very fabric of their life together unravels. The media frenzy surrounding the explosion of the plane that her husband was piloting, brings to light the plain fact that her husband had been, unbeknownst to her, leading a double life, a life that had not included her or their daughter, but had, most emphatically, excluded them. This is a story of Kathryn's navigation of the emotional roller coaster that was to become her life, as she is thrust into a maelstrom of grief and disbelief, as she struggles to reconcile her memory of the man she thought she knew, with the reality of who he now appeared to have been. This is a remarkable book, written in clean spare prose, that underscores some of the very emotion laden issues with which it grapples. At times infinitely sad and poignant, it is a story of betrayal and splintered memories. A very absorbing, skillfully told tale of adultery that will hold the reader in its thrall.
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Summary: A night that was too short
Review: I stayed up almost all night reading this book. I was drawn to it by the haunting cover, which accurately captured the fragility and strength of the book's heroine. I couldn't put the book down, meaning that the next day, I was rather cranky. I kept turning the plot over and over in my mind, oddly entranced with the characters and the story. As a highschool teacher who sees too many girls exploring their own sexuality at an age where I know they can't handle the emotional trauma, I was rather disturbed by Kathryn's hands off attitude to her daughter's rite of passage. Granted, she did have a few other things on her mind. But still...! However, the appeal of the book is not just the evolution of the mystery of her late husband but the reality of the way that past, present, and future intertwine in the book's pages. The prose particularly is magnetic, making the reader a participant in the world of the book. Read it...you won't be disappointed.
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Summary: Excellent--an study of the many layers that humans have
Review: This is a novel that makes you appreciate the complexity of human beings and the secrets that people can have even when they live together and seem to have an idyllic life. One of the things tha continues to strike me about this story is that Shreve has not just had the heroine discover that her beloved husband has had a secret, adulterous life (quite enough to deal with) but has also had her discover that that other life is almost beyond her imagination--in another country, with political overtones. It strains the reader's understanding as it strains hers. Her discovery of her husband's other family--including children--is something that haunted me for a long time after I finished reading this. There is also a wonderful new hero here--the investigator sent by the FAA to study the crash is a wonderful, sympathetic, patient character.
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Summary: A Way with Words
Review: This book is a quick read, and enjoyable. I read the first third of it outloud to my husband on a three hour drive. He keeps asking my how it ended...I told him he'll have to read it. I enjoyed the word pictures and writing style as well as the actual story. A good vacation book.
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Summary: strong emotions....
Review: I just finished this book and was amazed at how the writer was able to capture the emotions and put them into words. I felt like it was me who was going through this terrible tragedy. I would wake at night with a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Never has a book captured my soul as much as this one.
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