Mary Harrington

Mary Harrington

Summer Reading: Bonding by Mariel Franklin

A bleak, bone-dry satire for the aspirant global monoculture

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Mary Harrington
Jul 11, 2025
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Somehow these days I end up not reading much fiction. But recently, by a happy coincidence I came across Bonding, the first novel by London-based writer Mariel Franklin. And my goodness I’m glad I did. Billed as satirical, it reads just as plausibly as tragedy; either way, it’s a note-perfect tale of 21st-century tech, disembodiment, alienation, and glo…

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