Bonding

‘I absolutely loved it. Anyone interested in the relationship between tech, our bodies and our minds should bump it to the top of their queue immediately’ – Zadie Smith, author of The Fraud

‘This smart, disturbing debut reads like a 19th-century novel of manners for the digital age . . . Franklin has written one of the most stimulating novels I have read’ – The Times

Electrifying, urgent, and darkly funny, Mariel Franklin’s debut Bonding is a uniquely modern story of sex, tech and freedom in the messy tangle of our digital age.

Adrift in her early thirties, Mary is exhausted by an endless cycle of casual relationships and unstable work. When she loses her job, she books a spontaneous trip to Ibiza and meets Tom, a brilliant chemist on the verge of launching a new antidepressant: a drug called Eudaxa that claims to be able to cure the anxieties of modern life.

Back in London, Mary runs into the volatile and driven Lara, who has channelled her ambitions into Openr, an innovative dating app designed to revolutionise the industry. Mary and Lara have a complicated past, and as she begins working for Openr and falling for Tom, tech and pharma collide with shocking consequences, forcing Mary to question what love and success mean in a world that is hurtling out of control.

‘Audacious, hot, deeply uncomfortable and genuinely thrilling’ – Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes