WL Rating
From the author of The Devil’s Teeth comes an ambitious new book about the strange world of gigantic waves. Exhaustively researched, The Wave shifts between the dramatic exploits of big wave surfers and the science behind rogue wave creation and maritime destruction. The author, Susan Casey, is an entertaining writer with a knack for creating pithy, punchy descriptions of mundane events. Unfortunately, sometimes the descriptions are borderline cornball, e.g. describing Garrett McNamara as a surfer with “a wild streak the size of Interstate 10.” Frankly, I was a bit conflicted by The Wave. While I enjoyed some of its surfing and science passages, neither topic really drew me passionately into the book. As a result, I think that experienced surfers will find The Wave’s melodrama a bit bromidic, whereas science enthusiasts will struggle to take the book’s light science seriously. Ultimately, it’s this disconnected flitting back and forth between surfing and science that undermines The Wave’s narrative, and left this reader feeling unsatisfied. (October 2010)
