lilyanne's Full Review: Anita Shreve - The Pilot's Wife: A Novel Tag Autho...
The Pilot’s Wife written by Anita Shreve fell short in too many aspects for me to give it any credit whatsoever. Either the author put a lot of effort into this book but doesn’t have enough writing talent to pull it off or else she is a talented writer who didn’t put enough effort into writing this book to make it a good read.
The Plot
This story is about a Kathryn who’s husband, Jack, is a pilot for a commercial airline. His plane goes down in the Atlantic off the U.K., killing everyone aboard. Kathryn is left with her teenage daughter, Mattie and her grandmother, Julia. Robert, a representative from her husband’s union, who becomes her support throughout this ordeal, delivers the terrible news. Kathryn, while going through her husband’s pockets, finds a few obvious clues as to her husband’s other life.
I found the plot to be totally predictable. The author gives way too many obvious hints as to what is going to unfold.
The Characters
Kathryn is a 33-year-old mother and wife. She teaches music and history at the local high school. When she was 18-years-old she met her husband while working at Julia’s bookstore. It was love at first sight. She closed the shop and they went to the beach where they got to know each other more intimately (ahem!) although no details were given.
Jack is Kathryn’s husband. He is a 49-year-old pilot for Vision Airlines. He bought Kathryn a house on the beach 4 ½ years after they met. Mattie was 4 years old at the time. It was a house that they had trespassed in on the day they met and went to the beach. The author makes a mistake here in that she writes that the couple met 4 ½ years ago and if they got pregnant right away (which is what the reader must assume) then their daughter would have only been 3-years-old (unless she was born 4 months prematurely). Jack is found to have a secret life involving another woman.
Mattie is their rebellious 15-year-old daughter. She was very close to her father.
Robert is 38-years-old. He is the union representative who’s job it is to inform families that their loved one has died in a crash. He then keeps the media at arm’s length and does damage control should there be pilot error. He is divorced and is a reformed alcoholic.
Julia is Kathryn’s 78-year-old grandmother. She is hip and energetic. Julia raised Kathryn because her parents had drowned while she was young. Julia is a strong character. She steps in and takes control of the situation. She takes Mattie to her own house to rest and recover from the shock.
Character Development
The above information (and I know it’s not a lot) given about the characters is spread thinly throughout the first few chapters of the book. The author chose to reveal very little about each character and when she did reveal something it was given bit by bit. I found it difficult to create a portrait of each character because of this strange method the author chose to use. By not grouping the information about the characters together, it gave me an incomplete picture of them thereby making it difficult to relate to them, care about them and journey with them along the storyline. Did the author do this purposely to keep us interested so that we would want to know more and more about the characters? It certainly didn’t work!
The author wrote the book in the third person but showing only Kathryn’s thoughts, views and sometimes feelings. This may have been part of the reason that the characters were so poorly developed although definitely not a good excuse. It was written in the past tense with flashbacks interjected throughout the book.
The dialogue may have been another reason why the character development failed. I found the conversations to be stilted, choppy and emotionless. It reads like a script with very seldom an indication as to how the line was delivered. Quite often the author merely writes the dialogue and doesn't even add "she said" or "he asked." This results in an emotionless read. For such an emotional subject, the author certainly had lots of opportunity to make me feel for the characters if not make me weep for them.
The Twist
I like a book with a twist at the end but there must be clues given along the way. The trick is to cleverly hide these clues so that when I come to the twist I say “Aha, of course, why didn’t I see that!?” The author chose to blatantly drop hints as to what was going to unfold. By doing this she insults the intelligence of the reader.
For example, Kathryn finds a post office receipt in Jack’s pocket. She sees that it is for $22.00 and says to herself that it must have been for stamps. She then tucks it away in her own pocket. Come, come, now, why would the author have put this detail in and show that Kathryn had a conscious thought about it, if it were a meaningless piece of information? Kathryn also found a note written by her husband to FedEx a robe to be delivered on December 23 but as the author points out through Kathryn’s thoughts, she would have been in school that day not to mention that Jack would have been home anyway. There were also large hints that something might occur between Kathryn and Robert, the union guy. It would have been a bigger surprise if something had not occurred! The author tried to make these hints subtle but didn’t succeed. There are more examples but I’ll stop here because you have the idea.
The Style
I found the author’s style of writing unbelievable. For example, when Jack surprised Kathryn with a house he had bought for her, Kathryn feels “slow and doltish.” I can think of many different ways to feel if I had been surprised with a house, the house where my husband and I first made love on the day we met, but “slow and doltish” is not one of them.
Another example is during the first day or two that Kathryn met Robert she asks him why he chooses to do this job. He replies, “I suppose I’m drawn to moments of intensity…in the range of human experience.” Maybe it’s me but I can’t picture a person giving that reply, especially a man (no offense guys).
Oops
Apart from the age mistake that the author made there was also another glaring mistake. Kathryn finds a poem handwritten by her husband on a piece of paper. For some reason the Kathryn knows that her husband is not the author of this poem but that he copied it from a book, which coincidentally Kathryn finds. This didn't make sense to me because when I read the poem I immediately thought that the husband wrote it.
On The Plus Side
The author does give good descriptions of houses and architecture. She also does a fair job developing Julia’s character; unfortunately Julia is not featured in much of the book.
My Final Word
I am genuinely surprised that some people enjoyed this book. It just did not come across as well written to me.
If I had to describe this book I’d say it’s “slow and doltish!”
Oprah's Pick #23: March 31, 1999 A pilot's wife is taught to be prepared for the late-night knock at the door. But when Kathryn Lyons receives word th...More at HotBookSale
Until now, Kathryn Lyons s life has been peaceful if unextraordinary: a satisfying job teaching high school in the New England mill town of her childh...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.