Bonding, Mariel Franklin
Bonding, Mariel Franklin
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
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Bonding
A Novel

Author: Mariel Franklin

Narrator: Ellie Kendrick

Unabridged: 10 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/22/2025

Synopsis

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. This program is read by Ellie Kendrick, best known for roles in the BBC's The Diary of Anne Frank, the 2010's Upstairs Downstairs, and the HBO series Game of Thrones.

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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About Ellie Kendrick

Ellie Kendrick is a writer and performer across film, theatre and television. She is a graduate of the Channel 4 Screenwriting Programme. She started writing at the Royal Court Theatre, where she has completed the Young Writers Group, Studio Group and a special invitation group led by EV Crowe. Her first play, TABS, was shortlisted for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and her second play has been commissioned by the Royal Court Theatre. She is currently writing two more of her own original ideas under commission for Channel 4 and HighTide theatre and has projects in development with several independent television companies. Her work as a performer includes Game of Thrones, An Education, The Diary of Anne Frank, Misfits, Being Human, Upstairs Downstairs and plays at the Royal Court, Globe and Hampstead theatres.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Denise on March 16, 2025

At first I thought this was going to be an aggressively bisexual love triangle at the intersection of some interesting commentary on tech, relationships and society, so I was excited, but eventually I just found it tedious. I find people who work in tech tend to have this very spare, unassuming, non......more

Goodreads review by Jake on September 28, 2024

I’d read a pretty positive review that described this as a near-future dystopia with powerful things to say about modern Britain a while back and saved it as one to read. I realised quite soon into this book that I was perhaps not the target demographic. But I thought it’s good to read things outsid......more

Goodreads review by Sean on August 16, 2024

feel completely drained by this, which is good possibly?......more

Goodreads review by Sam on April 08, 2024

I've never left a review on Goodreads before but I loved this book so much, I can't stop thinking about it. It's not a straight up thriller, so you'll be disappointed if that's what you're expecting. It's also not specifically about drugs (although the way she explores the drug is fascinating). I ac......more

Goodreads review by Eden on June 07, 2024

2.5 stars. This book had a lot to say about society, British culture, dating apps and mental health and it did it in an intriguing way, although it took a bit too long to get there for me and none of it really felt very convincing. The majority of this book is about relationship building and introdu......more

Quotes

“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

“With dazzling imagination, Franklin fashions cutting-edge concepts, then uses them to pry open the human heart and interrogate the eternal questions therein. Chilling but warm, eagle-eyed yet sweeping, Bonding is a fascinating, ambitious tale for our modern age.”
—Andrew Lipstein, author of Something Rotten

“An addictive and unsparing novel. Mariel Franklin contends with some of our most urgent questions: the selling off of desire, and the dangerous sublimation of intimacy, attention, and the body in the face of tech and pharma. Cuttingly funny and terrifically smart, Bonding sounds a warning about influence, magnetism and what we’ll risk in order to feel—and not feel. A gorgeous, clear-eyed, and terrifying debut, Bonding is a love story for our times.”
—Claudia Dey, author of Daughter

“As relishable as it is terrifying, Bonding is an audacious, hot, deeply uncomfortable, and genuinely thrilling deep-dive into the dystopian future in which we now live.”
—Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes

“Fast, harsh, smart, and fun.”
—Daisy Hildyard, The Guardian

“Franklin’s agile, thought-provoking tale throbs with ideas, fears, and cautions.”
—Suzi Feay, Financial Times

“So obviously impressive . . . With its dissident intelligence and its comprehensive vision of a devastated social sphere, Mariel Franklin’s Bonding is the work of an author whose importance already feels assured.”
—Rob Doyle, The Observer

“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.”
—Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times (UK)

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