Calm down, knitting fans, this book may not be about what you might think. This is actually one of my favourite genres, the post-apocalyptic world. It is not too much of a spoiler to tell you that the wool in question is wire wool, used for cleaning. I've read books one to five, but I believe there are three or four more out there at the time of writing.
From what I can gather, the author self-published book one as a short story through the Kindle, then it was super-popular, so he published the rest. It would appear that he has been extremely successful and recently sold the film rights. Hurray for him--I like the idea of self-publishing through the Kindle, and although it does result in quite a lot of rubbish getting out to our innocent eyes, I do enjoy a self-made success story.
This is one of several books I have read recently that almost read like a film script. Actually, I think this one would work much better as a TV series, one with Jennifer Garner as the star. The thing is, though, if I want to watch a film or TV, that is what I will do. I do not especially like novels that feel as though they are written with the screen in mind. They are usually fast-paced, and all action and dialogue, and take a very short time to read, and give the reader very little insight into the characters. That is what we have with Wool.
The story revolves around characters living in a “silo” of a hundred and forty-four floors (if I remember rightly), all underground. They have to be underground because the air in the Earth has been made toxic and no-one can go outside without dying within a few minutes. They have been living underground for generations with an improbably inexhaustible oil field just below it, which is powering everything. They re-use and recycle things such as paper, but they have had a power station working for generations, which is pretty amazing, I can tell you from ten years of working with power stations in a previous life.
Article comments