Bonding: A Novel

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