David Grann

The story of the Wager, a ship that was part of a British armada sent to locate the Spanish during the 1740s. The ships sailed around the southern end of South American, and some turned back, but the Wager was wrecked. With the crew suffering from scurvy, they spent 5 months on a desolate island visited only once by some native people from the mainland. Finally, a large part of the crew took the largest of the ship's boats and headed back north to England, leaving the captain and some officers behind. Was it a mutiny? Was there murder? When several groups arrived home, there was a court martial proceeding and then the story just disappeared.… (mais)

I've read a lot of books like this and had high hopes, it is David Grann. It's certainly not bad, but Grann is best when he has a strong central character, this is more of a Towering Inferno with lots of parallel disasters diluting the narrative. Furthermore, he sticks to the history close enough, and that history is incomplete, so there are gaps. Also while he makes a big deal about how the stories conflicted, he doesn't present conflicting stories, or explain the different version of events. The ending is anti-climatic. Some of this is not the fault of Grann but the material he had to work with.… (mais)