The Marigold

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

“The ecohorror angle provides something different for horror fans and climate activists alike.” — Booklist

“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 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

“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

“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 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

“It's hard to balance compelling storytelling with explorations of complex social problems, but this is what Andrew F. Sullivan does in The Marigold...This book poses so many questions about our collective problems, but it’s also a fun and fascinating ride as a few vivid characters try desperately to save their city.” — Hypes and Archetypes newsletter

“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

“Sullivan has a taste for the urban grotesque, a talent for noticing what is ugly about the present.” — Literary Review of Canada

“In the end, what unites almost every character in The Marigold, every person living in Toronto, perhaps every person in the world, is their unasked-for collectivity in victimhood and hunger, a class consciousness born of paying a price no one asked for. It’s a dark kind of hope, but it’s what The Marigold has to offer. This is a bleak book for a bleak world, which is essentially what I, for one, am looking for in horror fiction: intelligent use of the aesthetic markers of the genre to tell an interesting story that reflects the haunted world we live in.” — Seize the Press

“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.” — Rue Morgue Magazine

“The novel follows the lives of city power brokers side-by-side with technocrats sculpting the surveillance economy to their nefarious ends. Sullivan positions his genre-diverse characters so deftly in his narrative that they don’t seem out of place sharing the page.” — The Globe & Mail

“Sullivan’s story blends body horror, urban dystopia, and eco-horror into a unique tale about the high price of progress.” — Library Journal

“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

“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 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

“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

“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

“Fast-paced, exciting, and atmospheric.” — Bionic Sarah’s Book Blog

“With a cast of characters that include a health inspector, a ride share driver, and a tween intent on rescuing a friend captured by a mysterious horror, The Marigold is a propulsive, jagged, and often even darkly funny exploration of the climate crisis, urban greed, and the spiritual cost of rampant inequality. Setting community, hope, and a little downtown ingenuity against corruption and a truly unique monster, The Marigold is one of the must-read novels out this season.” — Open Book

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

“For those with stomachs for putrescence and biting satire, The Marigold, warts and all, is a dark delight and a fine addition to a burgeoning Canadian horror and speculative fiction scene.” — Winnipeg Free Press

“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

“In particular, Sullivan excels at blurring the lines between dystopian nightmare and our very present environmental crisis. But whenever the drear of the real threatens to overwhelm, Sullivan injects a fresh surreal detail to liven the atmosphere. By the end, as the multiple plot strands coalesce, 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