the marigold

Join writer, broadcaster and blind adventurer Red Széll for the latest episode of AMI-audio’s My Life in Books. Each fortnight, Red invites you to join him in conversation with a renowned author about their work and the books that inspired them to write. For this episode, Red is joined by Canadian author Andrew F. Sullivan. Over the past decade, Andrew has built a reputation as an author of gritty tales for gritty times. His debut novel, Waste, was described by the Toronto Star as "Keystone Cops meet horror in Oshawa." His latest, The Marigold, is set in a post-climate catastrophe Toronto ravaged by extreme weather, unfettered development and a toxic mould that’s rising from the groundwater and becoming sentient. It’s not a tale for the faint-hearted, but in its often grotesquely funny portrayal of a shiny city being consumed by the very land it stands on, it poses serious questions about mankind’s corruption of nature through our relentless desire for growth. Join Andrew and Red as they explore Toronto’s sinkholes, and the pitfalls and possible ramifications of late-stage capitalism. My Life in Books airs Mondays at 1 p.m. Eastern on AMI-audio, or download the podcast from your favourite provider via this link: https://www.ami.ca/My-Life-Books/recent_episodes

ABOUT ANDREW SULLIVAN: Andrew F. Sullivan is the author of novels The Marigold; The Handyman Method (co-written with Nick Cutter); Waste, a Globe and Mail Best Book; and the story collection All We Want Is Everything, a Globe and Mail Best Book and finalist for the Relit Award. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario. ABOUT THE MARIGOLD: 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 Toronto 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 on 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.