Bonding
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Franklin's wry debut skewers the shifting social mores of late-stage capitalism. Mary, 32, is in a rut—recently fired from her dead-end London marketing job, she watches old episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot in place of a social life. Seeking excitement, she flies to Ibiza, where she meets alluring but aloof 36-year-old pharmaceutical marketer Tom. Their early interactions are stilted, and Tom, a fellow Brit, dispenses withering comments about her passive demeanor (" ‘You're one of those people who never shares anything, aren't you?' he said. ‘You're a pervert. You like lurking' "). But as they continue partying together, their connection grows. Meanwhile, Mary hears from enigmatic Lara, 33, once her lover and friend, who ghosted her three years earlier. Lara, an artist turned entrepreneur, practically begs Mary to take a job at Openr, her new dating app for "open-minded singles and couples." Back in the U.K., Mary ignores her instincts in favor of a paycheck and takes the role. Her days intensify as she balances developing edgy content for Openr and supporting Tom's work on the pharmaceutical industry's first prescription psychedelic. Franklin grounds the novel with textured characterizations, particularly in the contrast between Lara and Tom and in Mary's conflicting feelings toward them. This smart novel has plenty of bite.
