Picador snaps up Franklin’s ‘uncommonly sharp and darkly funny’ début

Picador has signed Melissa Franklin’s début novel Chemistry, “a provocative, sharply observed and gripping novel of ideas that exposes the fault lines pervading contemporary attitudes to life, work and the people you sleep with”.

Gillian Fitzgerald-Kelly, commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Niki Chang at David Higham Associates, for publication in spring 2024.

Chemistry sees an unnamed narrator unexpectedly let go from her job in marketing. With no one to talk to about it and nothing to do, she decides to take a trip to Westfield to lose herself in a sea of shops and endless distractions. While drifting through the building and messaging a man she doesn’t know – Matt, 36 – on a dangerously addictive dating app, she impulsively books a trip to Ibiza. Alone on the island, she meets a man named Tom, gets high and wakes up in his bed the following day. Tom tells her he works for a company that is developing a revolutionary new antidepressant and back in the city they find themselves drawn together again.

The synopsis goes on: “In desperate need of gainful employment, she is enticed by a job offer from an old lover, Lara. Openr is another dating app slowly infecting the city. Except this one is doing something different. Innovative, daring and totally untested, Openr aspires to take the frustration out of dating by creating a completely fair romantic marketplace, one in which social justice is at the fore. But when Lara sees Tom getting closer and closer to her old friend, things start to get complicated.”

Franklin lives and works in London. She has a MA in English from the University of Edinburgh and later went on to study fine art at Goldsmiths. After graduating, she spent several years working as a data manager in the tech industry.  

Fitzgerald-Kelly said: “I have been hoping to find a novel like Melissa’s for some time now. Chemistry deftly explores the most pressing current questions about modern love with intelligence, humour and staggering skill. It is a wildly entertaining story and provoked countless conversations in the Pan Macmillan office on submission. Uncommonly sharp and darkly funny, I can’t quite believe this is Melissa’s first novel and am thrilled to be able to bring her to the Picador list.”