Review: The Marigold

The Marigold
Andrew F. Sullivan, 352 pgs, ECW Press, ecwpress.com, $24.95

A cult of sacrifice-outsourcing real estate developers, public health investigators sporting bestial masks and a large cast of other Torontonians struggle to contain, monetize or simply survive a deadly fungal outbreak in this satiric horror novel. Set in an increasingly hollowed-out version of the city, with a sinkhole in place of Queen’s Park, driver-less streetcars drowning in sewage and an atrophied public sector at the mercy of a Sidewalk Labs stand-in, The Marigold is an engaging and unsettling saga of precarity and proliferating catastrophes.

Sullivan cites David Cronenberg and J.G. Ballard as major influences on the novel, and it shows in his eerie vision of the city. The titular condo tower features prominently, but the Toronto of The Marigold is most effectively unnerving when rendered from the vantage point of foundation pits, damp parking garages, fortress-like backyards and underground tunnels.

There’s a skillful balancing of the novel’s outlandish and grimly comic moments against its bleaker through-lines. Direct grotesqueness in The Marigold serves as an effective reprieve from its more grounded and familiar horrors. The novel often comes across as an expression of grief, and ineffectuality is ever-present: “Maybe he could see what was coming. It didn’t mean he could change it.” The fatalism and absence of easy platitudes allow for a more genuine engagement with social and ecological disaster.

Although characters in The Marigold can occasionally come across as stilted, they’re ultimately more than mere ciphers for conveying the corrosive effect of capitalism. Their complexity is most apparent in their grudging resilience and brief moments of slipshod resistance.

Features

A Day with Matt Farley, The World’s Most Prolific Artist

I admire Matt Farley and what he represents. I predict that he will one day be recognized as one of the emblematic creatives of his era. For this reason, I travelled to Peabody, Massachusetts for the Motern Extravaganza, an annual concert and fan event Farley holds in his own honour.

Thunderous Feminism: The Legacy of the Northern Woman Journal

On printing day of the famed Thunder Bay feminist publication, one woman would type on an electric typewriter while volunteers spread the issue’s pages on the counters and stools of what was formerly a Finnish restaurant — still smelling of the fryer oil.

Trash and Treasure: The Holycrap Family on Zinemaking and Keepsaking

Their award-winning zine may have begun as a lighthearted family activity, but parents Pann and Claire Lim's are attempting to present Rubbish Famzine as something more enduring to their children: an heirloom.

The Tide Turns in Time

How Michael Novick and his street action political zine Turning the Tide evolved to put radical media in the hands of the people.

In the Beginning was the End: 50 Years of Devo

Like the oscillations on an energy dome, the de-evolution doctrine of some geeky Akron, Ohio punkers has echoed for generations, inspiring underground art scenes for most of a century. This is the story of art and Devo.

Hardcore in the Void: The Return of Anti-Matter

"There were definitely times where I thought, ‘I could really use a conversation with someone who’s just seen it all.’” Texas is the Reason's Norman Brannon discusses his reasons for reviving his '90s hardcore zine.