David Grann's The Wager gets three-quarters brilliant after four years of research. The dense first 80-100 pages set up a nautical survival story that explores the human condition under extreme stress, appealing to readers who loved Killers of the Flower Moon.
All right, book review. The Wager by David Graham. This fella did Killers of the Flower Moon. Awesome movie. My wife's a red fella, Cherokee. Fantastic. I'm black fella, Wurundjeri. Phenomenal. But anyway, I'm not talking about Killers of the Flower Moon. I'm talking about The Wager. So, grading. I gotta give it a, man, I really wanna give it a full brilliant, but I gotta give it like a 3/4 brilliant. Um, yeah, 3/4 brilliant. That's what I'm gonna go with. 3/4 brilliant, bordering on a brilliant. Uh, it's a lot of setup for this book and you are talking about, I don't know, I don't know, maybe 100 pages, maybe 80 pages for the setup, but you need the setup. And he does a lot of, he's a, he's a historical researcher who also writes books. So he would say he's probably a historical novelist. But you know, man, he's a researcher. This guy spent 4 years researching this thing and it deserved the award it got, the best time seller. But look, this is definitely worth the read. If you like nautical stuff, if you like British history stuff, if you like struggle, survival, and the inside track of why people like a lot of the— but it's got a lot of the fly stuff here, and it's very, very interesting in the human condition under stress. So The Wager by Graham, the guy who wrote Swallow Moon, which is also bloody brilliant, three-quarter brilliant.
