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The Pilot's Wife
 
 
The Pilot's Wife (Paperback)
by Anita Shreve (Author) "SHE HEARD A KNOCKING, AND THEN A DOG BARKING ..." (more)
3.5 out of 5 stars 44 customer reviews (44 customer reviews)

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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
With five novels to her credit, including the acclaimed The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve now offers a skillfully crafted exploration of the long reach of tragedy in The Pilot's Wife. News of Jack Lyons's fatal crash sends his wife into shock and emotional numbness:
Kathryn wished she could manage a coma. Instead, it seemed that quite the opposite had happened: She felt herself to be inside of a private weather system, one in which she was continuously tossed and buffeted by bits of news and information, sometimes chilled by thoughts of what lay immediately ahead, thawed by the kindness of others...frequently drenched by memories that seemed to have no regard for circumstance or place, and then subjected to the nearly intolerable heat of reporters, photographers and curious onlookers. It was a weather system with no logic, she had decided, no pattern, no progression, no form.
The situation becomes even more dire when the plane's black box is recovered, pinning responsibility for the crash on Jack. In an attempt to clear his name, Kathryn searches for any and all clues to the hours before the flight. Yet each discovery forces her to realise that she didn't know her husband of 16 years at all. Shreve's complex and highly convincing treatment of Kathryn's dilemma, coupled with intriguing minor characters and an expertly paced plot, makes The Pilot's Wife really takes off.

THE TIMES
THE WEIGHT OF WATER * "Compelling and beautifully written"

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SHE HEARD A KNOCKING, AND THEN A DOG BARKING. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
44 Reviews
5 star: 27%  (12)
4 star: 27%  (12)
3 star: 22%  (10)
2 star: 11%  (5)
1 star: 11%  (5)
 
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A MOSAIC OF AN EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE..., 20 Sep 2001
By Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: The Pilot's Wife (Paperback)
This is a beautifully written novel about a happily married woman, Kathryn Lyons, whose husband, Jack, is an airlines pilot. They have a teen age daughter named Mattie. They live in Kathryn's 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 inescapable 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, struggling 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. It is a very absorbing, skillfully told tale of adultery that will hold the reader in its thrall.

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Did I miss something?, 24 Oct 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: The Pilot's Wife (Paperback)
I really only picked up this book as there was an 'Oprah' sticker on the front of it. I waited 240 pages to find out what I had suspected all along. What is written in the first three quarters of the book could have been said in one Chapter. There was just no storyline, bar the constant grieving which I had really had enough of after page 27. Enough already!!! The ridiculous descriptions of Northern Ireland at the end turned me off completely. It's a bit insulting to a reader to skim over such detail and expect the reader not to notice...ahem...we do notice? I could not feel anything for the charachters, especially the strategically placed saviour who appears and disappears, as if to 'fit' into the storyline (of which there is little). Sketchy charachters with little depth, no story, rushed ending looked like she was in a hurry to 'tie it all up'. It certainly tied me up. I shall not be reading another. Most disappointed as I genuinly wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A MOSAIC OF AN EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE..., 13 Jan 2003
By Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)   
This is a beautifully written novel about a happily married woman, Kathryn Lyons, whose husband, Jack, is an airline 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. 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, as well as a very absorbing, skillfully told tale of adultery that will hold the reader in its thrall.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? YesNo (Report this)


Write an online review
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars How Well Do You Know Your Spouse?
The Pilot's Wife looks at that common subject of modern fiction, alienation that separates nonreligious from one another. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Donald Mitchell

3.0 out of 5 stars Not the best Shreve book I have read......
Kathryn gets a knock at the door in the middle of the night and her life begins to unravel. Her husband has been killed in a mid-air explosion en route to US from London. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Wynne Kelly

4.0 out of 5 stars Very absorbing
This was my introduction to Anita Shreve's books. I certainly loved it and went on to buy others. This is the gripping story of that infamous "knock at the door" and what... Read more
Published 8 months ago by I LOVE BOOKS

1.0 out of 5 stars A truly Awful book
I picked up this novel to take with me on holiday- I had heard of Anita Shreve as a writer of some substance and skill and thought I ought to acquaint myself. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr. S. J. Bonsor

5.0 out of 5 stars A simply wonderful, classic must-read
This book was my introduction to Anita Shreve's works and I have read it already several times. Her style of writing is captivating, the setting in Ely, New Hampshire, magical and... Read more
Published 11 months ago by T. Ljubic-Brown