Selling LipService

Compared to the likes of Clockwork Orange, Zoo City, and 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 commercialization of language. Through a linguistically brilliant text, Tammy Baikie has created a world that exposes a society swallowed up by ad men. Since coming of 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 about 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.