WINNER OF THE DINAANE DEBUT FICTION AWARD FOR 2016Compared to the likes of Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City and Andrew Miller’s Dub Steps, Selling LipService is a daring novel. Selling LipService introduces its reader to a strange assortment of new vocabulary, and through this touches on the familiar danger of the commercialisation of language. Through a linguistically brilliant text, Tammy Baikie has created a world that exposes a society that has been swallowed up by the ad men.

“This book is guaranteed to appeal to anyone who loves reading” – Dr Pamela Nichols

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.

“I have been repackaged. My cellophane surface is so slick that not even the rain clings to it. But the package contents lie. This is not what I am. The gaudy veneer of bright words that declaim and cajole are not mine – they are yours. I am the perishable rawness beneath.”

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.