Customer Reviews:
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 More Interesting than I thought. October 19, 2008
I first became interested with the Medusa in an Art history class and began researching it on my own. I saw in an issue of ARTNEWS that this book came out and I immediately found it on amazon.
I like how the test is displayed. First Miles talks about the "main characters", and how they became involved with the journey. How the whole incident unfolded out at sea and what happened to each "life boat" and their passengers definatly kept my attention. I recommend anyone interested in the wreck of the Medusa to get into this book.
 A voyage that went VERY wrong September 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I just finished "The Wreck of the Medusa," yet I am stuck on a pretty basic question: What is this book about?
"Duh!," you might say. "Look at the cover: It's about the wreck of the sailing ship Medusa in 1816."
Well, yes, it's partly about the wreck, but the book skitters across several other subjects, too. Author Jonathan Miles spends as much time on French politics of the period as he does on the shipwreck. He also includes a biography of the painter Theodore Gericault (who painted "The Raft of the Medusa"). And he spends one section looking at the slave trade, which had nothing to do with the Medusa.
Miles is clearly a thorough researcher, having dug through diaries, old books and newspapers, and other records to put together this book. He carefully describes how the incompetence of the Medusa captain led to its wreck off the African coast, and he details the horrific ordeals - including cannibalism - of those who had to abandon ship.
But by the middle of the book, the wreck and the survivors' ordeals are over, and the book seems adrift for the rest. There's too many characters that come and go briefly, and too many shifts in direction. "The Wreck of the Medusa" needs some focus.
 A Captain Who Did Not Go Down With His Ship September 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
After reading this book, the Stern Librarian found it necessary to amend her Amazon List of "books to keep you on the sea after finishing Patrick O'Brian." Overlapping in time with the Aubrey-Maturin series, but telling a French story, this book is a fascinating tale of what results when a Navy rewards political favoritism over skill. The story of the wreck of the Medusa off the coast of Senegal is artfully related, and the author alternates between details of the tragedy and the creation of Gericault's painting of its desperate survivors, which today hangs in the Louvre. Although there is horror to spare in the details of the shipwreck, I was most moved by the story of Gericault's love affair with his uncle's wife and of the unhappy fate of their abandoned child. The Stern Librarian (I am the daughter of a daughter of a sailor).
Incompetence + cannibalism = fine art January 23, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Anyone who has studied art history is probably already familiar with Gericault's famous painting of the Medusa. I was first introduced to the painting in high school and while I remembered that it was inspired by a true and politically important incident, I didn't really know much beyond that. This book explains the event in great detail, but in a way that is very readable and not at all tedious. It also provides an overview of Gericault's life, his experience of creating the painting and public reactions to it. So really, you get a lot out of this book: naval history, 19th century French political history, art history and it has enough depictions of humanity at its worst that one might even classify it as having "true crime" elements. Highly recommended.
Step into a masterpiece November 14, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I had the impression to step into the very fabric in the canvas of Gericault's celebrated masterpiece, knowing personally each of the painting's characters. Mile's storytelling is so vivid, down to the last historical detail, that I soon forgot Medusa is not a novel. Compelling, hypnotic, fascinating.
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