Proper Gauge is Engaging in More Ways Than One

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A Review of Wool: Proper Gauge by Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey continues building the Silo world of Wool in Proper Gauge. We left Sheriff Holston dead with his secret after his “cleaning” of the outside camera lenses in Wool. In Proper Gauge, it is the next day. A day when revelers celebrate the release of tension about who will do the next “cleaning.” They are grateful they didn’t have to clean the lenses, now they can express that joy. While most of the population in the silo are celebrating, Mayor Jahns and Deputy Marnes are weighted down with grief over the loss of their friend and sheriff, Holston. They also face the grueling task of finding the right person to fill the empty sheriff’s position. This choice is of supreme importance to the mayor, because “Whoever we decide will probably be here long after we’re gone.” Mayor Jahns knows that choosing the right person for sheriff is as important as choosing the right needle for her knitting project. The proper gauge in needles or in people is, not only important, but “critical.”

Deputy Marnes offers three possible candidates for the job, but only recommends one, Juliette Nichols. Juliette, or Jules, was born into a family health practitioners, but she chose a different path. She is content as Mechanical worker in the lowest levels of the silo, which is 144 floors deep, and will probably refuse the position. Mayor Jahns wants to visit these lower levels to “get us a proper gauge of this Juliette” and take time for silent mourning. Both Jahns and Marnes are older people, so the journey is a grueling trek down. Plus they are going against the flow of travelers who are going to the first floor to celebrate the cleaning.

As they travel into the bowels of the silo in search of a new sheriff, the people they pass look to Mayor Jahns with eyes crying, “Keep us going, … Make it so my kids live as long as me. Don’t let it unravel, not just yet.” But Jahns knows it “only [takes] one snip for it all to unravel.” This is a heroic quest to save their people for one more generation and we begin to see the possible threads that might unravel in a segregated society divided by floors. “The silo was mathematically divided into three sections of forty-eight floors each…” with the administrators and white collar workers live on the upper floors of the silo. The workers who keep the silo functional (farmers, electricians, mechanics) are on the lower levels. And smack in the middle is IT with Bernard Holland, whom we instantly dislike, Head of IT. We learn that it’s customary for the Head of IT to approve the Mayor’s choice for sheriff.

The quest for a sheriff also turns into a personal quest for unfulfilled love between our two travelers. It is chance to build on a relationship they both chose to keep professional for years and so, “out of nothing comes something,” has multiple meanings to the plot. But not everything that comes out of this trip is beneficial and the hitches in the overall plot of the whole Wool series becomes more complex.

I still have to give this novella kudos. It continues to keep us interested in the overall series even though it limits the number of character we are exposed to. In this way, the characters are developed into realistically people with pasts and hopes and dreams -even in what we believe is a depressingly limited world. Each peripheral character from one story becomes the main character in the next, so there is still continuity in the storytelling. In fact, our entire knowledge of the silo world of Wool grows with each reading. The rich imagery and smells carry through from the top levels to the “down deep” of the silo, and so do the political struggles over power usage and supplies. It’s still worthwhile, so I’m on to reading, the third book in Hugh Howey’s Wool Series: Casting Off.

It’s a Wooly Dystopian Conundrum

A Review of Wool by Hugh Howey

Why name a novel Wool? Wool, wool. What wool? The cloth that’s itchy on sensitive skin? The fleecy covering on sheep until they share it with us? Wool, like fuzzy heads or unshaved faces? As it turns out, wool in Hugh Howey’s novel is the steel wool used to clean camera lenses on a buried silo. A silo buried for life, for the living in some post-apocalyptic world in which the descendants of survivors only have a camera’s eye view of the outside world and that camera lens must be kept clean. So wool, steel wool, is essential to this society. The title makes sense.

The opening line gets our attention with an opposition of imagery and attitude. “The children were playing while Holston climbed to his death…” The obvious dichotomy of playing children, full of life and dying creates enough curiosity to engage the reader. The contrasts between living and dying continues as Holston takes his time, moving up each step in a methodical and ponderous way. He wears “old boots” as he climbs a metal spiral staircase, paint chipped with age and metal floor worn so thin even the diamond no-slip pattern is flatten by time and numerous footfalls. Holston punctuates this difference as he reflects on how the sounds of “childlike delight” and youthful nativity “who in their minds were not buried” are “incongruous with…his decision and determination to die.” And we ask ourselves, why is he so determined to die? Holston’s ponderings about what the “untold years had done, the ablation of molecules and lives, layer and layer ground to fine dust” help us empathize with Holston’s resignation borne of desperation.

Questions, pulled from reader with incongruities like laughing children and death, are marvelous tools for writers and Howey uses them well. We are engaged with Holston and this generationally buried society enough to read the entire account. We learn about the importance of cleaning the outside camera lenses, which needs to done every couple of years because toxic soot builds up and clouds the exterior view. We also learn that the job is fatal. The toxins in the air are still so powerful they deteriorate the chemical safety suits in a matter of minutes and kill the “cleaner.” Criminals are sometimes used to clean the lens, but at other times there are those who actually volunteer for the job, like Holston does now…like his deceased wife did a year ago.

Sheriff Holston was married to Allison, one of the few IT workers in the silo. In this limited space, controlled environment procreation is only permitted for couples who win the “lottery.” The lottery allows couples to attempt to produce offspring for one year, then that privilege goes to another winning couple. Holston and Allison won the lottery the year she volunteered for “cleaning.” The laughing children remind him of what might have been, of the child he and Allison might have had if not for the secret she learned while recovering deleted computer files. However, as Holston learns, the secret Allison thinks she discovered is not the real secret.

I highly recommend Wool by Hugh Howey because he builds his setting with rich details and his characters, though a bit stagnant, are engaging. You sympathize with the main characters and feel their pain. We don’t learn a lot about Deputy Marnes or Mayor Jahns in this first book, but we are deeply involved with Sheriff Holston, Allison and a society living in a silo. It’s not an action-packed, plot-driven escapism novella, but it does keeps moving with twists and turns you don’t see coming. And it does move quickly along, taking us into a dystopian world with rich texture and compelling traditions. We don’t get answers to questions like, “what happen to create this mess,” but we are sucked into the world of one man and his desperate reaction to the loss of a spouse and the loss of hope.

I’ve only seen one drawback to Wool. It’s a free standalone novella in the Wool Series of five separate books. (Wool, Proper Gauge, Casting Off, The Unraveling, The Stranded) It is part of the Silo Series which includes the Shift Series (First Shift: Legacy, Second Shift: Order, Third Shift: Pact), plus the final novel, Dust. It was free, so I can’t complain too much. And it did pull me in enough to read the second book in the series, Proper Gauge. FYI enjoyed it too, and now I’m working on the third book, Casting Off. More to come about those books later. My only regret is that I bought the books individually and didn’t go ahead and purchase the Wool Omnibus Edition, which contains those first five books. Don’t make the same mistake I did!