The Marigold

By (author): Andrew F. Sullivan

“This impressively bleak vision of the near future is as grotesquely amusing as it is grim.” — Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW

 “A gripping tour-de-force torn from tomorrow’s headlines.” — David Demchuk, author of Red X and The Bone Mother

“A bold dystopian novel that captivates with its dread and depth. The Marigold is unhinged literary horror that goes right to the source of decay.” — Iain Reid, award-winning author of I’m Thinking of Ending ThingsFoe, and We Spread

In a near-future Toronto buffeted by environmental chaos and unfettered development, an unsettling new lifeform begins to grow beneath the surface, feeding off the past.

The Marigold, a gleaming Toronto condo tower, sits a half-empty promise: a stack of scuffed rental suites and undelivered amenities that crumbles around its residents as a mysterious sludge spreads slowly through it. Public health inspector Cathy Jin investigates this toxic mold as it infests the city’s infrastructure, rotting it from within, while Sam “Soda” Dalipagic stumbles on a dangerous cache of data while cruising the streets in his Camry, waiting for his next rideshare alert. On the outskirts of downtown, 13-year-old Henrietta Brakes chases a friend deep underground after he’s snatched into a sinkhole by a creature from below.

All the while, construction of the city’s newest luxury tower, Marigold II, has stalled. Stanley Marigold, the struggling son of the legendary developer behind this project, decides he must tap into a hidden reserve of old power to make his dream a reality — one with a human cost.

Weaving together disparate storylines and tapping into the realms of body horror, urban dystopia, and ecofiction, The Marigold explores the precarity of community and the fragile designs that bind us together.

AUTHOR

Andrew F. Sullivan

Andrew F. Sullivan is the author of novels The Marigold; The Handyman Method (co-written with Nick Cutter); Waste, a Globe and Mail Best Book; and the story collection All We Want Is Everything, a Globe and Mail Best Book and finalist for the Relit Award. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.


Reviews

“This impressively bleak vision of the near future is as grotesquely amusing as it is grim.” — Publishers Weekly Starred Review
“Sullivan’s story blends body horror, urban dystopia, and eco-horror into a unique tale about the high price of progress.” — Library Journal
“The ecohorror angle provides something different for horror fans and climate activists alike.” — Booklist
“A bold dystopian novel that captivates with its dread and depth. The Marigold is unhinged literary horror that goes right to the source of decay.” — Iain Reid, award-winning author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Foe, and We Spread
“Sullivan cultivates a truly suffocating atmosphere of economic and social tension, a sense that the world has moved beyond the verge of collapse and into a long, slow slide to oblivion. This is urban horror done right, layered with the cold, unalloyed terror of watching the world crumble in real time. The Marigold is a back-breaker for the genre.” — Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt
“Andrew F. Sullivan’s books delve into dark territories other writers are too timid to explore, finding nuance and emotional resonance in that stony soil. The Marigold has all the hallmarks of his past work while being something all its own, daunting and daring and just a little scary.” — Craig Davidson, bestselling author of The Saturday Night Ghost Club and Precious Cargo
“Andrew F. Sullivan’s The Marigold is a Cronenbergian Bonfire of the Vanities, a scalpel-sharp near-future thriller about an all-consuming city in thrall to greed and power, and the disparate creatures, human and otherwise, caught in its draintrap. A gripping tour-de-force torn from tomorrow’s headlines.” — David Demchuk, author of Red X and The Bone Mother
“Andrew F. Sullivan’s The Marigold grows a terribly plausible urban future from the capitalist wreckage of the modern ‘world class’ city and drowns it in a tide of Boschian chaos that folds apocalypses of body horror, techno-fascism, economic, and climate collapse into one roiling, angry wave that’ll sweep you away with its narrative force.” — Indrapramit Das, author of The Devourers
“As weird as it is wild, The Marigold is a bold eco-horror fable with biting critiques about climate change, the gig economy, and other aspects of our modern dystopia. Once The Marigold gets its spores in you, you’ll be compelled to read to the end.” — Lincoln Michel, author of The Body Scout
The Marigold is a tremendous book, a damning indictment of the greed that drives the suicidal hostility we display toward our own environment, and an exhilarating dive into the weird new realities that brings. Juggling multiple viewpoints and always keeping one foot on the gas, Andrew F. Sullivan has written a vicious, delightfully bizarre ecological horror story. This one’s going to live with me for a while.” — Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters, Wounds, and The Strange

Awards

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“This impressively bleak vision of the near future is as grotesquely amusing as it is grim.” — Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW

 “A gripping tour-de-force torn from tomorrow’s headlines.” — David Demchuk, author of Red X and The Bone Mother

“A bold dystopian novel that captivates with its dread and depth. The Marigold is unhinged literary horror that goes right to the source of decay.” — Iain Reid, award-winning author of I’m Thinking of Ending ThingsFoe, and We Spread

In a near-future Toronto buffeted by environmental chaos and unfettered development, an unsettling new lifeform begins to grow beneath the surface, feeding off the past.

The Marigold, a gleaming Toronto condo tower, sits a half-empty promise: a stack of scuffed rental suites and undelivered amenities that crumbles around its residents as a mysterious sludge spreads slowly through it. Public health inspector Cathy Jin investigates this toxic mold as it infests the city’s infrastructure, rotting it from within, while Sam “Soda” Dalipagic stumbles on a dangerous cache of data while cruising the streets in his Camry, waiting for his next rideshare alert. On the outskirts of downtown, 13-year-old Henrietta Brakes chases a friend deep underground after he’s snatched into a sinkhole by a creature from below.

All the while, construction of the city’s newest luxury tower, Marigold II, has stalled. Stanley Marigold, the struggling son of the legendary developer behind this project, decides he must tap into a hidden reserve of old power to make his dream a reality — one with a human cost.

Weaving together disparate storylines and tapping into the realms of body horror, urban dystopia, and ecofiction, The Marigold explores the precarity of community and the fragile designs that bind us together.

Sales and Market Bullets

  • BIG CITY AS CURSED GROUND: Though set in Toronto, the book’s examination of a crumbling urban center left abandoned to corporate interests is universal enough to be recognized by readers anywhere: it feels dystopian yet just around the corner and is rife with human insight and presented in striking prose that cuts sharp as a knife.
  • A STAR ON THE RISE: Sullivan’s star is on the rise, and he is poised to strike big with his sophomore novel The Handyman Method, horror fiction coauthored with Nick Cutter, releasing in 2023 from Saga Press (Simon & Schuster).
  • TWO GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOKS: Sullivan’s novel Waste and short story collection All We Want Is Everything were both Globe and Mail Best Books (2013, 2016).
  • CROSS-GENRE:The Marigold is sure to astonish horror-lovers and lit-fic fans alike.
  • MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW: The book weaves together the stories of desperate people: the young girl in search of a friend snatched into a sinkhole by a beast from below; the stony civil scientist shaken by her run-ins with the city’s gruesome infestation; the floundering rideshare driver burdened with dangerous secrets on a USB drive; the billionaire real estate mogul, whose machinations cost lives and who can no longer control his own schemes.

Audience

  • Readers of literary dystopian fiction like Station Eleven, The Annual Migration of Clouds, and The Power
  • Readers of horror books
  • Fans of the movies Parasite and Snowpiercer
  • Socially conscious millennials

Reader Reviews

Accessibility Detail

EPUB Accessibility Specification 1.0 AA
Table of contents navigation
Short alternative textual descriptions
Language tagging provided
Single logical reading order
Print-equivalent page numbering

Details

Dimensions:

352 Pages
8.5in * 5.5in * 0.7966in
0.66lb

Published:

April 18, 2023

City of Publication:

Toronto

Country of Publication:

CA

Publisher:

ECW Press

ISBN:

9781770416642

Book Subjects:

FICTION / Horror

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

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