A review by athenenoctua11
The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

3.0

I'm very torn regarding this book. While Anne Lindbergh's life is fascinating enough in itself to guarantee an interesting read, I didn't find myself gripped by the story. The book seemed to go on and on and I was in parts angry and broken-hearted and despairing with the behaviour of people, mostly Charles Lindbergh. It is mostly a sorrowful book and even the happiest parts seem to have a pressage (evident or not) of bad times to come. I enjoyed the parts with Anne's family, especially in her youth, the most: they were a bunch of lively, interesting people. But along came Charles Lindbergh, the hero that everyone loved to love, and he wasn't exactly husband-material, to put it lightly. In an era where marriages were for life and the wife's role was to take care of the children, Anne did manage to become a lot more than that, at least for a while, but there were always things she never had the courage to say, things she didn't have the courage to be and that is frustrating for a modern-day reader. You want to shake her but you know that she was already miles ahead of many women of her time, braver and smarter.