THE MARIGOLD

AVAILABLE NOW FROM ECW PRESS

“One of the country’s most talented young writers.” — The Globe & Mail

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 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 onto 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.

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REVIEWS FOR THE MARIGOLD

“Throughout this crisply written urban horror novel, Sullivan makes a chilling case for humanity’s obsolescence. […] This impressively bleak vision of the near future is as grotesquely amusing as it is grim.”
— Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Sullivan excels at blurring the lines between dystopian nightmare and our very present environmental crisis. […] The Marigold proves to be a light-footed punk tour through our worrying tomorrow. It’s more fun than you think an oppressive urban hellscape could possibly be.”
— Esquire

“If the Wet sounds like a rich metaphor for Toronto’s well-documented decline in recent years, you’re not far off. What you probably won’t see coming is the novel’s droll humour and humane regard for its sprawling cast of richly drawn characters — The Marigold is body horror with a heart.”
— Toronto Star

“Sullivan render[s] the government corruption at the heart of his novel with a convincing deal of fidelity. Cronyism, real estate speculation, coercion and embezzlement are still alive and well in the dour future world of The Marigold.”
— The Globe & Mail

“The Marigold is not only a scathing critique of development and technology run amok, but an entertaining, if somewhat nauseating ride into the dark heart of The Six — or any major 21st-century North American city, for that matter.”
— Winnipeg Free Press

“The latest from Sullivan gives new meaning to the term “urban blight.” [His] story blends body horror, urban dystopia, and eco-horror into a unique tale about the high price of progress.”
— Library Journal

“Sullivan has a taste for the urban grotesque, a talent for noticing what is ugly about the present. […] In this sense, his writing recalls that of the English novelist J. G. Ballard, another smooth purveyor of nightmarish cityscapes. Both writers depict propulsive disaster and ask questions about the psychology of built environments, the effects of modern technology on human well-being, and social progress.”
— Literary Review of Canada

“Much like the best kinds of literary horror, The Marigold uses the everyday struggles of class, power, and labour to frame and fuel the motivations of its many disparate characters. […] For Sullivan, our society’s obsession with work over well-being creates fertile conditions for The Marigold’s very specific type of horror – one that is rooted in urban decay and the myriad uses of flesh.”
— Rue Morgue

“Reading this book feels like rubbernecking on the highway. You can see the disaster coming until it’s right outside your window. You can feel this book careening toward its conclusion, but can’t look away from the resulting devastation. Beautifully written and carefully plotted, The Marigold is an immersive and horrifying read, perfect for horror and literature fans alike.”
— The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript

“The Marigold is a brilliant and multifaceted satire every bit as savage and grotesque as it is complex. It’s unnerving, with monstrous villains both human and not, and a setting that feels alive and connected to its protagonists. It’s a triumph of weirdfic, a brutally effective satire of modern urban decay, and a whole lot of twisted fun as well.”
— The Strange Library

“Wickedly funny, nihilistically hopeful, The Marigold is a body-horror ecological disaster that submerges a whole city for the crime of a few residents asking for a better quality of life.”
— Ginger Nuts of Horror

“That’s The Marigold in a nutshell: it masterfully encompasses both trenchant social critique and excellent horror qua horror, dual approaches simultaneously integral to the novel while neither overshadows the other. “
— Seize the Press

“For all the far-out horrors on offer here - horror fans, get on board for what will surely be a standout of the year - Sullivan grounds his book in the surrealism of our confirmed, shared reality.”
— The Bookshelf

“While there are many layers to this text, the author respects readers enough to give them room to create and build their own meaning. The Marigold can be read on multiple levels as a mystery, as a horror story, but also as an acerbic social commentary, some of which is surprisingly funny. The horror that pervades (and is almost more discomfiting than) the Wet is the impact of the unbounded capitalism on the environment and the population of the city.”
— Spacing

”The Marigold is a hauntingly beautiful tale of decay told through the eyes of the city itself, experimental and bold.”
— Horror DNA

“Frequently evading understanding, The Marigold is a clever and unpredictable novel that I highly recommend.”
— Ginger Nuts of Horror, Second Review

“The Marigold is a deeply unsettling novel. Sullivan’s writing is crisp, vivid and occasionally stomach-turning, but also elegant and even, in certain moments, beautiful. It’s a horror story that pulls you in and won’t let go.”
— Winnipeg Free Press - Paperbacks Column

“Equal parts grim, horrifying, and bizarre, The Marigold is a gutsy look at how we’re destroying ourselves from the inside out.”
— Consumed by Ink

“Sullivan’s aptitude for capturing the dark, funny, and strange through a large ensemble of fully-realized, compelling characters is no easy feat, but he makes it look easy.”
— The 49th Shelf

“So much more than an apocalyptic horror novel. Sullivan uses the fantastic horror to examine topical issues such as greed, social inequality and climate change.”
— 24 Symbols

“An eerie sense of doom […]. Readers are forced to watch as plans for a new tower, Marigold II, finally bring the human cost of development home to roost. The ecohorror angle provides something different for horror fans and climate activists alike.”
— ALA Booklist

“If The Marigold ends with anything it is in a single idea -- terrifying and horrifying in its own way -- that things do not have to be like this.”
— The Lit Crit Guy

“Sullivan conjures a physically painful sense of economic desperation, a feeling familiar to anyone who’s ever lain awake at night fixating on where rent is coming from, on how to afford groceries, on whether to see a doctor or go to work to avoid getting fired. Even degraded and crushed down, their humanity shines through.”
— Paper Cuts

“A complex and creepy metaphor for how corporate greed and wealth culture infects and consumes cities, The Marigold is a dystopian speculative horror that is layered and thematically rich.”
— Sound & Fury Book Reviews

“This is what good horror is: an expanding of uncanny possibilities and an admission that our worst fears are only ever the observable symptoms of an obfuscated illness allowed to run wild. For profit, for greed, for sheer bloody-mindedness and the belief that only our finite lives matter–this is why we live in hell. The rot runs deeper than we dare admit, but The Marigold tells all.”
— Tales of the Grotesque and Dunegonesque

PRAISE FOR THE MARIGOLD

"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, author of I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Foe, and We Spread

"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. Sullivan brings a pulsing urgency to his prose, a mordant wit to his unsettling extrapolations from our current technological, social and economic plagues, and an epic sweep to his depiction of the age-old struggles between the ruling class, the arrivistes, and those who serve and defy them. A gripping tour-de-force torn from tomorrow’s headlines."
— David Demchuk, author of Red X and The Bone Mother

“In this keen and surprising work of eco-horror, Andrew F. Sullivan feeds his inventive terrors on the dark fruits of our contemporary precarity: the inequities of the gig economy, the bloated cost of urban housing, the uncanniness of climate change. The Marigold is a fast-paced thrill ride, populated by sharply written characters you won’t soon forget.”
— Matt Bell, author of Appleseed

"The best horror is a mirror that thrills even as we dread seeing what we look like. Andrew F. Sullivan's The Marigold is a fierce mirror, wide as the sky, many layered, reflecting our environmental doom and unending consumption back onto us because we deserve it. With smart, elegant prose and storytelling mastery, Sullivan blends the organic and the infrastructure of horror with terrifying results."
— Michael Wehunt, author of The Inconsolables

"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

“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

“With The Marigold, 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

“Reading The Marigold is like reading The Haunting of Hill House from inside Hill House, sitting in one of its dusty parlors and soaking up the rancid energy. Only, with this book, the haunted house is the city of Toronto.”
— Trevor Henderson, artist and author of Scarewaves

"The Marigold is a wild eco-horror fable with biting critiques about climate change, the gig economy, and other aspects of our modern dystopia. Once The Marigold gets its strange spores in you, you'll be compelled to read to the end."
— Lincoln Michel, author of The Body Scout

"Purportedly a work of so-called 'science fiction', The Marigold is in fact a bracing novel of the strictest realism. What if Raymond Carver had read a J.G. Ballard story every time he wanted a drink? This book would have been the result. Buy it! (You have to buy things!)"
— Nick Mamatas, author of The Second Shooter and The People's Republic of Everything

“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

“The Marigold is social critique written in the only way that makes sense right now: as delirious, meticulously planned horror.”
— Naben Ruthnum, author of Helpmeet and A Hero of Our Time