Review | Woolly looks at the science that could bring the mammoth back from extinction

Woolly
written and read by Ben Mezrich
Simon & Schuster Audio

Woolly is a fantastic tale – so much so that you’ll wonder what is fact and fiction. That’s in no small part due to Ben Mezrich’s style of narrative non-fiction, in which he recreates dialogue and changes settings and characters as he sees fit. While that approach can be employ­ed to add pace to a plodding tale, this is a story that doesn’t need embellishment, centring, as it does, on creating a woolly mammoth (which lived during the last ice age) from genetic code and a “proper flesh-and-blood incubator” (an elephant).

But perhaps Mezrich wanted to write a book that, like several of his previous works, lends itself to the big screen.

Woolly, however, is no Jurassic Park, which Mezrich describes as pure science fiction.

The work being done now to revive the woolly mammoth is highlighting other “de-extinctions” currently being explored.