What is our legacy? What will be left of us when it’s all said and done?

 

Andrew F. Sullivan’s The Marigold asks these questions and more, creating a fictionalized version of Toronto that is as much a mirror of its real-world counterpart as it is its own entity. It’s a tumultuous time our city is facing, between a rapidly increasing homelessness rate, the rising cost of living, and a City Hall in a massive state of flux. In The Marigold, Sullivan places these themes of homelessness, political turmoil and economic hardship against a backdrop of horror, emphasizing their immediacy and danger. Through entertaining character-led storytelling, a subtle atmosphere of despair, and just enough similarities to our real world, Sullivan creates an extremely effective narrative that makes readers reflect on the troubles facing our world.

 

The Marigold is a multifaceted tale of speculative horror fiction, following four different perspectives as they deal with a mysterious yet horrifying threat. This is a Toronto of the near future, facing environmental disasters and out of control development. Sullivan’s Toronto is now plagued by a strange rot known as “The Wet”, a mold-like substance that seems to be coming from the very roots of the city. Not only has this mold infected and taken lives, but the instability it’s caused to the infrastructure combined with poor environmental conditions has also led to several sinkholes opening up around the city.  One of our protagonists is Cathy, a public safety agent who cleans up Wet outbreaks across the city. Stanley is the wealthy son of an industrial giant trying to make his own name through a struggling plan for a giant condo tower. Sam (or “Soda”) is a thirty-something rideshare driver struggling to make something of himself, who one day receives a USB drive with a dangerous secret. Lastly, Henrietta is a young girl searching for a friend who fell down one of the largest sinkholes in the city. While all widely different, each protagonist is connected by the city they live in, its condition vastly shaping the challenges they must face. Interspersed through the novel are one-off chapters following various residents in the titular “Marigold” condo tower, that add further world-building and support to its central narrative.

 

Sullivan uses the city as a major influence in the development of his characters, as well as the questions he poses to the reader. Questions such as “What happens when a person’s worth is entirely evaluated through the lens of profit?” and “How does this endless race for profit affect our relationships?” are filtered through the context of the city, adding more depth and immediacy to them. Perhaps the biggest question guiding the text is: What does it mean to leave a legacy behind? Both our positive actions and negative ones, the people we touch, and the damage we cause. This could be as personal as our familial relationships to something as large as the path of a city and its citizens. What are the echoes of the decisions we make, ones that will ring out long after we are gone?

 

Sullivan grapples with this question of legacy throughout the text. Through broken familial relationships being mended in their own, dysfunctional way and government policy leading to ecological disaster, much of the novel deals with the effects of actions taken long before the events it discusses.The unanswered trauma of past events then cascade into further problems, leading to a feedback loop that ends in the only way it can: tragedy. There’s a sense of melancholy throughout this tale, that if certain actions were taken and legacies faced, things could have been different.

 

Sullivan weaves the narrative through the viewpoint of multiple protagonists, which is a particular boon to the development of his characters. Each perspective brings something different that enhances the overall story, whether it’s Stanley’s cold and unfeeling view of the world or Cathy’s struggle with being pragmatic vs. following her dream of a better life somewhere else. Truly great stories with multiple protagonists are able to draw you in at the beginning of the chapter and then make you yearn for more right as they switch to the next perspective. Sullivan constantly manages to elicit this effect in me for different reasons. I wanted to see Cathy figure out her path, for Soda to find safety and for Stanely to fail (or at least get knocked down a couple of pegs.) Despite truly enjoying the ending for how well it closed the narrative (and the thoughts and feelings it elicited afterwards), I was disappointed at first about how it handled the story of the characters, save one. Each character goes through a significant journey, but I felt a bit cheated out of the natural conclusion to those endings, their final responses to what they went through and how it changed them. After it sat with me for some time, however, I felt the abrupt and crashing nature of the ending suited the book far more than a traditional ending. 

 

The setting of Toronto is not only done justice, but transformed in a way that feels entirely possible in our current political landscape. It’s clear Sullivan has spent a lot of time in Toronto, from how he describes the cramped, perpetually rainy DVP, or the endless construction projects downtown. Threshold, a private security company contracting the waterfront and creating their own surveillance state silicon valley for the city’s wealthy entrepreneurs, (it’s as absurd as it sounds) is only partly outside of the realm of reality. I particularly enjoyed the approach to the environment, and how the condition of the land reflected the horrific acts of the people who lived on it. As a Toronto native, I could see the resemblance vividly, which made the terror all the more real.

 

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the novel is the tone that Sullivan sets. The Wet comes alive in the mind of the reader, its cold depths felt throughout the text. Whether it’s dank underground parking garages or posh penthouse parties, you can never shake the looming sense of dread washed over the pages. Despite this world looking and sounding so much like our world, there’s a strangeness about it that only unsettles the reader. The slow creep of despair as you continue through the novel mimics the Wet’s slow spread, becoming an almost natural state. I found myself accepting the cold, knowing deep within that the story was preparing me for something. As more secrets unravel and tragedies strike all over, the tone begins to creep faster, egging the reader to continue. By the time you approach the novel’s climax, it’s as if you’re stuck in quicksand, resigned to your fate as the horror unravels across the pages. My almost muted reaction to the ending didn’t come as a surprise, but rather an inevitability of the creeping rot that had consumed me as I read. The seeds had been set long ago; I was only watching the natural growth resulting from those actions. It mirrors the themes of the text extremely well, and gives the entire novel a feeling of cohesion that really works to its benefit.

 

The Marigold is not only a product of its time, it’s a product of its setting. Between Toronto’s failure to properly care for its growing homeless population, concerns over the wealthy gating up more and more housing in the city, and aging infrastructure, it’s clear the city has some big issues it needs to tackle now rather than later. The Marigold is both inspired by and born in this context, weaving a tale of horror and introspection that’s sure to leave an impression.