The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve

I finished The Pilot's Wife last night. I can't say I enjoyed the book but I can see why it was an Oprah book club pick.

This book isn't very long, but the beginning is very slow and dragged on for me. In the very beginning the knock comes to the door which informs Katheryn that her husband has died in a plane crash. From this point on to almost three quarters the way into the novel not much else happens. Speculations are made as to the cause of the crash, and we get to see the effects this has on both the wife and the daughter. I think I was bored of the book at this point because it focused a lot on the wife's thoughts and feelings. This is of course important to a good novel but sometimes the best part of a novel is imagining yourself in the situation, and how you would feel in the characters position. I never really felt any attachment to the wife's character and I did not agree with a lot of the things she was thinking.

The novel didn't get interesting until the wife actually decided to do something about what happened and find out the truth about the crash. At this point the book got really good. I wanted to know what really happened and I felt like I'd been waiting forever to find out. I wasn't disappointed either, I liked the husbands story I thought it was interesting and well thought out. It also posed a lot of difficult questions about love and marriage. I personally think that he still loved his wife, and I didn't feel that he was a bad person. He may have made several bad choices but I felt he was trying his best to lessen the hurt he could have caused, although in the end it didn't quite work the way he planned.

Another part of the book I liked was the flashbacks. When in the mind of a suspicious wife the stories seemed to have two sides. The reader like Katheryn is wondering if there was another meaning hiding behind some of the events. Is something that seems innocent and sweet one moment take a different meaning when seen from the critical eyes of Katheryn.