The Flight Attendant: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful thriller about the ways an entire life can change in one night: A flight attendant wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, with a dead man—and no idea what happened. • Don't miss the acclaimed HBO Max series!
Cassandra Bowden is no stranger to hungover mornings. She's a binge drinker, her job with the airline making it easy to find adventure, and the occasional blackouts seem to be inevitable. She lives with them, and the accompanying self-loathing. When she awakes in a Dubai hotel room, she tries to piece the previous night back together, counting the minutes until she has to catch her crew shuttle to the airport. She quietly slides out of bed, careful not to aggravate her already pounding head, and looks at the man she spent the night with. She sees his dark hair. His utter stillness. And blood, a slick, still wet pool on the crisp white sheets.
Afraid to call the police—she's a single woman alone in a hotel room far from home—Cassie begins to lie. She lies as she joins the other flight attendants and pilots in the van. She lies on the way to Paris as she works the first class cabin. She lies to the FBI agents in New York who meet her at the gate. Soon it's too late to come clean-or face the truth about what really happened back in Dubai. Could she have killed him? If not, who did?
Set amid the captivating world of those whose lives unfold at forty thousand feet, The Flight Attendant unveils a spellbinding story of memory, of the giddy pleasures of alcohol and the devastating consequences of addiction, and of murder far from home.
Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
Cassandra Bowden is no stranger to hungover mornings. She's a binge drinker, her job with the airline making it easy to find adventure, and the occasional blackouts seem to be inevitable. She lives with them, and the accompanying self-loathing. When she awakes in a Dubai hotel room, she tries to piece the previous night back together, counting the minutes until she has to catch her crew shuttle to the airport. She quietly slides out of bed, careful not to aggravate her already pounding head, and looks at the man she spent the night with. She sees his dark hair. His utter stillness. And blood, a slick, still wet pool on the crisp white sheets.
Afraid to call the police—she's a single woman alone in a hotel room far from home—Cassie begins to lie. She lies as she joins the other flight attendants and pilots in the van. She lies on the way to Paris as she works the first class cabin. She lies to the FBI agents in New York who meet her at the gate. Soon it's too late to come clean-or face the truth about what really happened back in Dubai. Could she have killed him? If not, who did?
Set amid the captivating world of those whose lives unfold at forty thousand feet, The Flight Attendant unveils a spellbinding story of memory, of the giddy pleasures of alcohol and the devastating consequences of addiction, and of murder far from home.
Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
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Community Reviews
Content warning for death, violence, murder, binge drinking and blackouts, sexual assault, and related topics. I thought the set up of this thriller was really well done. The Elena sections give a sense of danger and foreboding, and it kept me invested in the novel more than I think I would have been if it was just Cassie's sections. I did not enjoy her as a narrator. The things she did were destructive to the extreme and hard to believe. I liked the slow burn aspect of this novel, but the ending was bonkers. It undid a lot of the work that the rest of the novel did, and the epilogue was even worse. I think it could have been more succinct and I would have liked the novel more.
Cassie Bowden is not just an alcoholic, she's obsessed with being an alcoholic. And with her own propensity to make bad decisions. And with generally being a screw-up. And, seriously, did I mention that Cassie drinks? Because we're told that over and over and over again. You know what, Cassie drinks. She drinks a lot. And she likes it. Did I mention that Cassie drinks?
Fortunately for the reader, becase following along while a 30-something year-old woman consistently refuses to do anything sensible is just not a lot of fun, there are larger issues of geopolitics at play in this book. It is those that lead to the dead man in the bed, and that actually drive the story forward as we wonder whether Cassie will live to take her next drink.
Fortunately for the reader, becase following along while a 30-something year-old woman consistently refuses to do anything sensible is just not a lot of fun, there are larger issues of geopolitics at play in this book. It is those that lead to the dead man in the bed, and that actually drive the story forward as we wonder whether Cassie will live to take her next drink.
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