Selling LipService, Tammy Baikie’s remarkable debut novel, was the winner of the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, and is out now from Jacana Media.

Daring in scope and exhibiting exhilarating virtuosity, it takes South African fiction into a space last seen with Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City.

“I was one of them – just as stroke-stricken, equally lost for words. We were as kinbled as our brain MRIs pinned up, on the wall of the ward. Each one with an almost identical inkblot lesion – a black mark against our names and the naming of all things.”

About the book:

Since coming of haemorrh-age, Frith must wear a LipService patch to write or speak. The words the patch produces are not her own. Scripted by copywriters, they promote one sponsoring brand or another. With them, ‘You’ – a voice in her head that is the patch’s brand persona and her conformist alter ego – appears.

Through the noise of You talking a variety of different LipService brands, Frith struggles to find her way back to speaking for herself. She believes her tastures – her ability to taste things she touches – are the key. But other elements of this consumerist society are equally interested in tastures for commercial gain.

For more about the book, click on the link above!

Listen to Baikie chatting about the novel with Tamara LePine-Williams on Classic FM:

 

https://www.facebook.com/JacanaMedia/videos/10154929159456169/

 

Categories Fiction South Africa

Tags Dinaane Debut Fiction Award Jacana Media Selling LipService Tammy Baikie