My Quick Take: This book crept up on me unexpectedly, building to a literal and metaphorical apocalypse.
***
The Marigold crept up on me (...infected me?) with its weirdness. The action is in a near future Toronto, and climate change has obviously taken its toll. Weather is unpredictable, random sinkholes wreak havoc on the landscape and something mysterious is happening in the ground below condo developments. A mold: “The Wet”. The narrative takes the form of multiple points of view, with a couple of truly over the top characters. Gradually I saw a creepy apocalyptic vision of Toronto in my imagination.

There is so much metaphor here. The Wet could be a stand-in for climate change, or more specifically the wages of our sins: ignoring the climate crisis; unfettered capitalism; or extreme avarice.

It sounds all so serious, but I detected a note of humour here too. A hint of camp. Though I may be wrong. This is urban lore–meets climate change fiction–meets plague novel–meets…hmm, maybe Ghostbusters? I’m sure this never occurred to the author, but I picked up on a few hints and references that reminded me of the movie, in a really good way! (To be clear, the plot of Ghostbusters and The Marigold have almost nothing in common–it’s more of a vibe I’m getting at). Though this is a story where the Ghostbusters wouldn’t emerge from the building triumphant, but rather running in terror from a black toxic sludge.

As you can tell this novel grew on me. It made me think a bit, and I had some fun reading it. I think it’d make a good movie!

Thanks to @netgalley and @ecwpress for a digital ARC in exchange for my review.

There was enough to love here that I can still very much see encouraging people on the fence to give it a try. I found that with so much going on I wanted more from those things. It felt muddy at times, too much adding up to not quite enough for me to enjoy reading it. I really felt that drag in the middle and the end didn't quite make up for that to me. That said, the setting was interesting and the horror felt both familiar and specific. It wasn't for me, but I could see how, if this specific type of satire is your thing, it could still be for you!

The Marigold is dense in subtextual (and textual) commentary on gentrification, development, and environmental crisis and its speculative world makes use of features of Toronto that I’m certainly familiar with. Ultimately, I found the narrative structure both choppy and slow, which makes it a book I admire intellectually but did not particularly enjoy reading.

I liked this one a lot better if I think of it as a series of interconnected stories rather than a novel. As a novel, it's a bit disjointed and I couldn't really tell what the main plot was until near the end, and even then it seemed weirdly paced; however, exploring the Wet phenomenon from so many different angles was fascinating.

This book was not for me. I felt that there were too many disparate perspectives that didn't really align within the narrative. I'd just be getting into the story in one perspective, only to be pulled out of it to hear a different part of the story from someone else.

I can understand that this was a stylistic choice and probably really works for some people but for me there was just too much going on.

I was excited by the premise as I'm really interested in how climate is being used in literature, particularly fears around climate change so I was really looking forward to this but ultimately couldn't finish it.

This was a very intense read that drops you into the middle of it's strange world immediately and does'nt wait for you to catch up. The plot does keep moving despite the many different directions the story is pulled given it's various perspectives. I think that it was a unique and intriguing story, but it was trying to do so much and doesn't end up doing enough of any of it. I thought all the perspectives were interesting to read from, but i could not get very attached or come to a real understanding with any of them because they weren't given a lot of real estate. Still, this was a very original work tackling so many topical issues in an inventive way.

The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan is a creeping dystopic eco-horror about the corruption of capitalism, poor urban planning, building health code violations, and sentient mold. The story follows various citizens—a mysterious gardener, a cab driver, and two health inspectors—as a strange black mold spreads throughout Toronto.

I admit, the story does take a while to take shape due to its cast size, but, pacing issues aside, this book still lured me in with some fantastic body horror. We get freaky shrieking biomasses reminiscent of the Symbiote from Venom, which is a monster trope I’m an absolute sucker for.

Overall, this book is a Black Mirror-esque type of “thinker” sci-fi that examines the horrors of urban society through a speculative lens, delivering biting social commentary alongside a dose of slime and decay.

A near-future Toronto on the brink, The Marigold reminds me of High Rise with a touch of mushroom horror. Pacing is a bit slower than I'd like, but the creeping unease is real. I'll booktalk this to horror and thriller readers.

I really enjoyed this book. A crumbling Toronto, greedy real estate developers, a dank and dark atmosphere make a great eco fiction/horror novel. I had Jeff Vandermeer vibes while reading it. It is told from several POVs but it moves the story along and the reader learns as the characters learn. The story held my attention throughout and wasn’t predictable.

Is it a horror novel? A social commentary? A new, or revamped older, mythology? An eco-novel (if there is such a thing)? Who knows but The Marigold is definitely a different type of genre mashup! The real question is whether you will enjoy reading it.

The novel is set in a near future Toronto which sounds very close to present day New York City. The rich run the town without regard for the poor struggling to live within it. Lately, high rise buildings are collapsing. Is it incompetent builders, cheap owners using subpar products, or something else much more complex?

I liked the combination of horror with climate change. The mythology was intriguing. But I just couldn’t get past the constant social commentary. I get it. The rich are out for themselves. All Americans understand that after four years of the last president (or the robber barons of a century or so ago). Perhaps innately friendly Canadians haven’t realized it yet. Still, it was pervasive and felt overdone. It definitely adversely impacted my enjoyment of the novel. For that reason alone, The Marigold gets 3 stars from me. However, if that type of preaching to the choir doesn’t bother you and you enjoy innovative horror plots, you should pick up this book.

Thanks to ECW Press and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

Andrew Sullivan loves Toronto and The Marigold is a tribute to that great city. His latest book, chock full of rich prose and vivid imagery, is about decay, urban sprawl, unchecked development, human irrelevance, and the vengeance of nature.

It’s about the Marigold, a shining jewel in the cityscape. A condo tower, the masterpiece of a developer, is developing a mysterious and spreading sludge. A health inspector discovers the foundations of the Marigold are actively rotting. Construction of a second Marigold has stopped. The lives of the residents of the condo are affected, and the humans are left to determine what will become of them in a city that seems increasingly alive.

Like the city, the cast of The Marigold is sprawling. The majority are balanced well by Sullivan and given depth in little page time. Each is a fleshed-out individual, flawed and doing their best to thrive within the shadow of the Marigold as the decay inevitably sets in.

Sullivan’s intent is to demonstrate the lives of individuals amidst an uncaring, almost sentient cityscape. Decay is inevitable as man’s hubris, but he makes a firm attempt to humanize those having their lives affected. Balancing many different perspectives and approaching the story from numerous directions is a difficult prospect, but Sullivan makes it work.

The theme of decay permeates the book. Sullivan’s descriptions of the inevitable rot setting through the metal are grotesque yet hauntingly compelling. The social commentary is obvious, with Sullivan covering the consequences of unchecked growth and how nature always reclaims its own.

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

Please see the podcast review and interview below, where the hosts of Podside Picnic talk to author, Andrew F. Sullivan about The Marigold.

I was very intrigued by The Marigold's premise. Urban fantasy/sci-fi is a genre I enjoy a lot (like NK Jemisin's Great Cities duology), so seeing one set in Toronto was very intriguing to me. And Andrew F Sullivan delivered on that front. I loved this. It was weird and unsettling but had a really important message. Highly highly recommend this!

The Marigold by Andrew F Sullivan, 360 pgs, Pub date: Apr 18th
Overall ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Prose ⭐⭐⭐💫
Pacing⭐⭐
Character Development ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Scary ⭐
Gore ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Atmosphere ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Library or Buy-worthy: I'm buying a finished copy.

The Marigold by Andrew F Sullivan is a weird dark blend of political philosophy, eco-horror and rotting dystopia with a dash of cosmic occultism for good taste. I'll say right up front, if you're reading this hoping for 'The Last of Us' then this isn't that book. You have to go into The Marigold reading it on it's own merit.

Through a variety of intertwined short stories the picture of a diseased future Toronto emerges. The snap shots of different lives, and how they are affected by the Wet (a strange disease) and the Marigold family was an interesting way of creating perspective. Going into this I expected to prefer a more typical style of novel, following one character throughout but I was wrong. This style fits the world building and the slow unfolding of the cohesive plotline perfectly. The city itself becomes a character. I loved the atmosphere this author was able to create. I could almost smell the damp stink and rot. An amazing amount of character development was achieved as well within these short chapters. Every character was intriguing and fully fleshed. I liked the LGBTQ character representation. Parts of this book had a uncanny Eyes Wide Shut/ Lost Highways /Fight Club vibe that I quite enjoyed. The Diva Tarot deck Irving reads was perhaps my favorite part. The level of humor was the perfect counterbalance for all the darkness.

In general I love weird books, eco-horror and spore horror so I'm biased but I liked this book so much. It won't be everyone's cup of tea but I'm simply impressed by the originality. Good writing, dark gritty world building, raccoon symbology and a touch of black gelatinous mold growing on every surface has me following this author for future books. This book is definitely getting filed with my favorite well thought-out, top shelf weird collection. Fucking outstanding work @afsulli.

This net galley copy expired before I could read it all, I was able to get thru about 150ish pages, This was really disappointing, I was really getting into the story.

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily and all opinions are my own.*

This book was good, I really enjoyed the story and thought it had lots of potential. However, it is told from so many different perspectives and directions. It jumps from character to character which made the storytelling so slow.

That being said, the social commentary in this book was really on point. It was at the heart of the book and was present and consistent throughout.

I would’ve liked a bit more tension and a few less character perspectives but the idea of the story was very cool and gave Succession vibes.

#TheMarigold #NetGalley

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

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. I’m also quite fond of novels that feature a giant pit.

The Marigold is a multi-POV novel (third person) that follows a young man down on his luck, a pair of public health officials inspecting the mould, a weirdo businessman, and a teenager searching for her friend. While they do, as you’d expect, meet up in a sense near the end, their stories serve to show different ways the mould (a metaphor for corporate greed) affects all levels of society, from the lower income to the richest bastards. We also get one-off chapters here and there of people living in the Marigold building, which helped fill in gaps for us readers in terms of what was happening. There is also a brief one-off mention of a pug named Ugly Humbert, which had me laughing so hard. While decidedly not a funny book, it doesn’t have brief moments of absurdity that I found humorous.

Speaking of the metaphor, though, and maybe I’m reading into it too much, but despite its literal sense in the novel, I also read the mould as the scourge of greed overtaking the city, how money, or the lust thereof, infests everything and eventually brings about destruction. In truth, I found the novel quite brilliant in that regard. When it chose to be, the prose was punchy and evocative.

The novel also breeches other themes, such as homelessness, poverty, wealth inequality, housing, climate change, underpaid work, and urban sprawl. In fact, there are even more concepts brought into this novel, and given I follow the politics of my province (and our province’s capital city) closely, there were references to some of those factors as well, though this is definitely more of a take-down than a love letter to the city.

Said city is near-future Toronto, a dystopian version. I’ve been to the city a lot, and I used to work downtown for two years. Despite that, I still wasn’t super keen on the specificity of some of the locations. In truth, and this is just an opinion, not a writing issue (as I know some readers who love this stuff); I just don’t like when books have obvious hard-ons for their real-life setting. I find it distracting, even if I know the place. A few name drops in the entire novel, sure, but listing street names and etc mean nothing to me. It’s not lazy writing, but an attempt immersion that just doesn’t work for me. Granted, it did make sense to include that stuff in this book, as it was a warped version of a particular city, a critique of what the future could hold (menacing mould aside), and it was great to see a Canadian city for once, rather than the same old NYC and LA that the US is always giving us.

That being said, the novel is bleak bleak bleak, moves at a languid pace (much like the mould), and a few of the characters aren’t very likable. The multi-POV also means we don’t get a ton of time with any of them, and, in fact, we spend the most time with the worst character of them all, though Sullivan did a great job keeping him from being too unlikeable - he felt human in his flaws.

The novel is not scary. It’s a horror in the sense that it has some squeamish stuff in it (body horror mainly), but it’s not frightening. It does have enough of a dash of Cordyceps to satisfy you if you’re wanting something like The Last of Us. It also reminded me of Finch by Jeff VanderMeer in tone and the idea of a city being overtaken by spores of some sort (albeit in a different way).

Overall, I really enjoyed it, it likely will be a book I think about from time to time (probably when I’m stuck on the DVP), it's one I'll definitely be recommending to my Toronto friends, and it's definitely worth checking out!

(I will say the epigraph at the start from Rob Ford was so funny!)

This was wild! I really got sucked into this one from the beginning. The idea of the spores, the gruesome consequences of coming in contact with them. And, really, at the center of it all is the hulking Marigold. This place is evil, that's certain, and if you dare to read this twisted tale, be ready for multiple angles looking at evil.

I liked this. I thought it was twisted, which is something I love. I love getting into the heads of characters and seeing the world through such a twisted viewpoint. This book has a lot packed in it and hops around to different points of view.

Okay, how many times did I use the word twisted in this? Lol. But, that's just the perfect description!

Out April 18, 2023!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. I was very excited to read this story but unfortunately after about 20% into the story I was just not connecting to the characters or invested in the story. The fungus/mold did seem interesting but the story just dives into the investigators going to find bodies that the mold has taken over and it was confusing on why the mold was there and why it takes over the humans. It did remind me slightly of the blob. I will say it was heavy on the Sci-fi which may be why I didn’t connect with the story but may be better for a different type of audience.

In a not-so-distant-future Toronto, a mold, simply labeled as The Wet, slowly begins to overtake buildings in a mysterious manner. At the center of it all, stands a building called The Marigold.

The book explores the evolution of The Wet by following tenants of The Marigold and people that have been affected by The Wet. While I really enjoyed the premise of this book, it just fell a little flat for me. We were introduced to quite a few characters who were killed off very soon, and that time may have been better served fleshing out the characters who made it to the end. All of the characters felt very static to me. I would have enjoyed more of a backstory to the Gardener and the lore behind the Seeds and the secret society. Of all the characters, I related to Jasmine and Cathy the best. They are two extreme sides of the same coin, and they just wanted what was best for each other.

I'd recommend this book if you're looking for a dystopian horror with some Last of Us vibes.