Description
Description
Electrifying, sharp, and darkly funny, Mariel Franklin's first novel, Bonding, is a story of sex, tech, and pharmaceuticals in the tangle of our digital age.
Mary is exhausted by an endless cycle of casual relationships and unstable work. When she loses her job yet again, she jumps on a plane to Ibiza. There, at a party, she meets Tom, a brilliant chemist on the verge of launching a drug made to cure the anxieties of modern life. Back in London after a heady trip, Mary runs into her volatile and driven sort-of-ex Lara, who has channeled her ambitions into an innovative dating app designed to revolutionize the industry. When Mary begins working for Lara and falling for Tom, tech and pharma collide with shocking consequences, forcing her to question what love and success mean in a world that is hurtling out of control. A searing, elegiac satire of the way we live and work, Mariel Franklin's perceptive and unnerving Bonding heralds the arrival of a blazing new talent.
About the Author
About the Author
Mariel Franklin lives and works in London. She has an MA in English from Edinburgh University and later went on to study fine art at Goldsmiths. After graduating, she spent several years working in data administration in the tech industry. Bonding is her first novel.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"[Mariel Franklin is] a confident storyteller with reserves of judgment and discrimination. You know from the first pages that you're reading the work of a novelist, not just someone who has written a novel . . . Impressive."
--Dwight Garner, New York Times
--Zadie Smith, author of The Fraud "With dazzling imagination, Franklin fashions cutting-edge concepts, then uses them to pry open the human heart and interrogate the eternal questions therein. Chilling but warm, eagle-eyed yet sweeping, Bonding is a fascinating, ambitious tale for our modern age."
--Andrew Lipstein, author of Something Rotten "An addictive and unsparing novel. Mariel Franklin contends with some of our most urgent questions: the selling off of desire, and the dangerous sublimation of intimacy, attention, and the body in the face of tech and pharma. Cuttingly funny and terrifically smart, Bonding sounds a warning about influence, magnetism and what we'll risk in order to feel--and not feel. A gorgeous, clear-eyed, and terrifying debut, Bonding is a love story for our times."
--Claudia Dey, author of Daughter "As relishable as it is terrifying, Bonding is an audacious, hot, deeply uncomfortable, and genuinely thrilling deep-dive into the dystopian future in which we now live."
--Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes "Fast, harsh, smart, and fun."
--Daisy Hildyard, The Guardian "Franklin's agile, thought-provoking tale throbs with ideas, fears, and cautions."
--Suzi Feay, Financial Times
"So obviously impressive . . . With its dissident intelligence and its comprehensive vision of a devastated social sphere, Mariel Franklin's Bonding is the work of an author whose importance already feels assured."
--Rob Doyle, The Observer "This smart, disturbing debut reads like a 19th-century novel of manners for the digital age . . . Franklin has written one of the most stimulating novels I have read."
--Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times (UK)
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Fsg Originals
Pub date:
2025-07-22
Length:
352 pages
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