Review of THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT by Chris Bohjalian

3 Stars

Cassie Bowden, an American flight attendant who regularly binge drinks and hooks up with random men, wakes up one morning in a Dubai hotel room next to a dead man, Alex Sokolov.  She decides not to notify the authorities for fear of being accused of his murder and flees to the United States.  Of course, evidence emerges showing her in the man’s company during her layover and the F.B.I. becomes interested in her connection with Alex.  Cassie suspects that a woman named Miranda who visited Alex the night before his death may be responsible.    

The book is narrated primarily from Cassie’s perspective, but there are short chapters showing the point of view of Elena, a female assassin.  Cassie’s narrative becomes repetitive:  she speaks to her lawyer, she is questioned by the F.B.I., she works an international flight, she gets drunk, she does something stupid, she speaks to her lawyer, etc.  Her thoughts are also repetitive:  constant guilt about her drinking and sexual liaisons.  Do we have to read at least seven times that Alex gently washed her hair?

It is very difficult to connect with the protagonist.  She is prone to self-pity, and her constant whining about things that happened in her childhood becomes so annoying.  The ice-cream her mother bought for Cassie’s 11^th birthday melted because of the behaviour of her drunken father?  Twenty years later, wouldn’t she have recovered from this event?  She admits that she is a pathological liar:  “’I’m a very, very good liar.  I lie all the time.  I lie to other people, I lie to myself.’”  She steals from hotel rooms:  “She did it because it was, like so much else that made her happy, dangerous and self-destructive and just a little bit sick.”  She is an alcoholic who drinks so much that she embarrasses herself and others and even suffers blackouts, yet she makes virtually no attempt to change.  Even after the events in Dubai, she continues to behave irresponsibly, to drink and pick up men for sexual encounters.  Her lawyer tells her, “’Someday you’ll hit bottom . . . For most people, that would have been Dubai.  Not you, apparently.’”  That lawyer also tells her, “’Just, please, act like a grown-up,’” and I think that reference to Cassie’s immaturity summarizes her character.  She seems to have no redeeming qualities, though I get the impression that her volunteering at a cat shelter is intended to earn her some sympathy from readers. 

There are some things that are just not plausible.  Cassie has been able to keep her job despite her drinking even though American flight attendants are subject to random tests for both drugs and alcohol?    Most hotels now have security cameras in hallways, but the one in Dubai doesn’t?  Most spies eventually become double agents?  How exactly does Elena track the person she is following?  There’s an app for that?  And don’t get me started on the improbable twists in the epilogue.  Given her reputation for instability, it is highly unlikely that Cassie would be asked to do what she does.    

Cassie is an alcoholic who “convinced herself that she wasn’t her father’s daughter and she wasn’t repeating his mistakes.  She wouldn’t let alcohol destroy her the way it had destroyed him.  And for over a decade and a half – until Dubai – on some level she had even believed that.”  She blames her father’s drinking for ruining her childhood, yet she becomes a drunk?  Even after Dubai, her behaviour doesn’t change.  The reader may accept that alcoholism is an inherited disease.  But then, one consequence of her past behaviour, an unlikely one at that, allows her to overcome her addiction? 

The pacing is problematic.  At the beginning, the pace is rather slow because not much happens.  Then we have the author climb on a political soap box in Chapter 21:  “For a time, the United States had shed great crocodile tears for the people of Aleppo, but they understood that Syria – and obviously Ukraine and Crimea – weren’t in their backyard.”  I may agree with Elena who “looked at photos of the presidents in Washington and Moscow and Damascus and thought darkly to herself, this is where it all ends. Here.”   But these observations just seem out of place.  Then the pace seems to speed out of control; so much happens so quickly at the end without sufficient background explanation.

I cannot say that the book is not entertaining, but the protagonist is too shallow and static to earn my sympathy, and there are just too many holes in the narrative to make it exceptional.