A monthly book review by The Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough.

“The Marigold,” by Andrew Sullivan

At the center of Andrew F. Sullivan’s “The Marigold” is rot. Set in a near-future Toronto, Sullivan lays the scene of a city consumed by consumption. Business and private interests control the minutiae of basic amenities. Public Health Department has become little more than a group of glorified note takers, tasked with recording the unexplainable and horrifying new infection spreading through the city, known only as “The Wet.”

A mold-like organism, The Wet infuses itself into every lonely crack of a crumbling city, overwhelming both the characters and the reader by the novel’s bleak finale.

Split into four main narratives, “The Marigold” follows Cathy and Jasmine, public health employees set on discovering whatever The Wet is after a chilling encounter in a parking garage; Soda, a rideshare driver and his conspiracy theorist father, thrown directly into the middle of a web of corporate espionage; Henrietta, a teenager looking for her missing neighbor, taken by an unseen creature living beneath the city; and Stanley Marigold, owner of the eponymous building, whose residents keep vanishing.

Reading this book feels like rubbernecking on the highway. You can see the disaster coming until it’s right outside your window. You can feel this book careening toward its conclusion, but can’t look away from the resulting devastation.

Beautifully written and carefully plotted, “The Marigold” is an immersive and horrifying read, perfect for horror and literature fans alike.

“A Registry of My Passage Upon The Earth,” by Daniel Mason

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I must confess, what brought me to Daniel Mason’s “A Registry of My Passage Upon The Earth,” published in 2020 and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2021, was that I was so utterly spellbound by another of his books, that being “The North Woods,” which is due to release in September of this year.

“A Registry of My Passage Upon The Earth” chronicles a number of short stories, none of which are directly related, and all of which are thematically linked. Written in simple, direct prose detailing extraordinary experiences, Mason does an exemplary job of setting a tone for the reader that matches the pace and the experience of his characters.

As the characters experience unique occurrences in their everyday lives, you read about unique occurrences in everyday prose. In approaching the book in this way, Mason sets the stage for a wonderfully immersive read inviting you not only as a voyeur but as an engaged bystander who feels compelled at times to jump through the page.

Mason is a master of world-building, not in the vein of J. R. R. Tolkien, who vitalized his world through the detailing of every scene and action, but through the relatability of the characters’ reactions to their surroundings.

The short stories are fantastic, their plots both resolute and independent, but full of the world in which they are set. Mason is a true wordsmith, his prose lush and ripe, and his understanding of the characters (both those he writes about and those he must very often engage with in his waking life) profound.

Emerson Sistare is owner of The Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough.