The Pilot's Wife Summary
Anita Shreve

The Pilot's Wife Summary

Despite its tense subject matter and tight plotting, The Pilot's Wife is above all the portrait of a marriage through the lens of grief and shifting realities. "How do you ever know that you know a person?" Kathryn wonders continually, thinking about how one first gets to know another by forming a picture, filling in "missing brush strokes, wait[ing] for form and color to materialize." As the novel meticulously sketches out the anatomy of grief, it also fills in the form and color of Kathryn's marriage.

320 Repeated references to and metaphors involving vision reinforce the necessity of self-examination and self-knowledge.

Kathryn moves through typical stages in her grief process, worrying about details such as Jack's last words, wondering if she will ever sleep again, imagining that she hears her husband on the stairs, marveling at "the way the body kept moving forward, past the shock and the...

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