Severance

by Ling Ma, Nancy Wu (Narrator)

Maybe it’s the end of the world, but not for Candace Chen, a millennial, first-generation American and office drone meandering her way into adulthood in Ling Ma’s offbeat, wryly funny, apocalyptic satire, Severance.

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.

So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Contemporary, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Post Apocalyptic

291 pages, Audiobook

First published August 14, 2018

About the author

Ling Ma is a writer hailing from Fujian, Utah, and Kansas. She is author of the novel SEVERANCE, and the story collection BLISS MONTAGE. She lives in Chicago with her family.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This book stopped me right in my tracks - literally. I read it in the span of five hours; I could not put it down. In Severance, Ling Ma shares the story of Candace Chen, a self-described millennial worker drone who spends much of her life sequestered in a Manhattan office tower. With both of her parents recently deceased and no other family or close friends, she has little else to do, aside from going to work and watching movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. Candace thus feels little emotion when the Shen Fever hits, a plague that renders people into non-violent zombie versions of themselves, doomed to repeat the same rote tasks over and over until they become fully unconscious. The story flashes between Candace's life before the Shen Fever hits, as well as after, when she travels with a group of survivors led by a power-hungry, authoritarian man named Bob.

Ling Ma creates an excellent atmosphere in Severance. While reading, I felt claustrophobic, trapped, and hooked into the story all at the same time - similar to how a lot of millennials feel within late-stage capitalism. The flashbacks and flashforwards worked well here, as they served to deepen Candace's character and backstory while also propelling the narrative forward. Within this tight, gripping plot, Ma inserts commentary about the deadening, devastating effects of capitalism that strikes a skillful balance between serious and satirical. Every element of this story - the zombie apocalypse, Candace's coming-of-age, the dive into corporate life - all came together in a dark, entrancing, and unputdownable way.

I have to say my heart broke when Ma wrote about Candace's immigrant parents and how their assimilation to the United States involved the absorption of capitalism. The way she wrote about Candace's father's relationship with work and her mother's relationship with material goods felt so true to my own immigrant family's experience in this country. Taking this aspect of the novel together with a reveal about Candace that happens pretty early in the story, I appreciated how Ma weaves in understated yet powerful insights about race, gender, and exploitation of foreign labor throughout the book.

A quirky, cynical, yet important read that has made me think a lot about what matters most in my life (hint: it's leaning toward my close friends and mentees/students, not my work). The style of this book reminded me of Weike Wang's Chemistry and Gabe Habash's Stephen Florida , with some Station Eleven vibes too. Highly recommended to those critical of society's emphasis on work who also want a unique, well-written story.

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ling Ma served us a whole meal. A feast. A buffet. A week’s worth of Thanksgiving dinners made up of gorgeously subtle metaphor and allegory and motif, if you will.

https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co...

And I will personally be stuffing myself my dear boy.

This is the kind of book that makes me wish I was still a student and I was assigned this book in an English class, and could spend a week's worth of hour-long lectures deep in discussion with 20 other people (but reasonably only four who had actually read it).

It's the kind of book I could have reread immediately after reading for the first time, and then a million times after that.

It's the kind of book that makes you think about that terrible movie with Bradley Cooper where he takes the pill that opens his brain up to full functioning, because that's the only way I can reasonably imagine being able to fully appreciate this.

The themes in this, man, the f*cking themes: The immigrant parent’s journey versus Candace’s pregnant journey in a new world. The fevered mindlessly going through tasks versus the pre-pandemic office workers doing the same. The idea of a “colony” and what that means. So, so many more.

I need to reread this immediately, is what I'm saying.

Bottom line: I want to eat this with a spoon.

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book club update

reading this pandemic novel during a pandemic for a) the self-destructive vibes and b) the book club. in that order

join the discussion here
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pre-review

do you remember those weird toys from childhood that were like little heart-shaped doodads with cartoon characters on them, and when you soaked them in water they turned into branded dish towels?

this book made me feel like one of those. but in reverse.

review to come / at least 4.5 stars but maybe 5

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currently-reading updates

taking a mental health test by reading a post-apocalyptic book in which the apocalypse was a pandemic featuring a virus that first appears like a cold

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tbr review

my face when i hear the words "anti-capitalist dystopian literary fiction": 😍

[Cindy Pham]

I relate a lot to the millenial experience of banality and monotony under capitalism; in fact, I could easily see myself in the same position as the main character, where I still go to work despite the death around me. I like that the zombie apocalypse is different in the sense that it is non-violent, and more so a mindless depiction of people following the same routine over and over again. I also appreciate the additional layer of the immigrant narrative and how the main character's feeling of "otherness" is what keeps her disaffected from the disease. But while I like these themes a lot, I still feel very lukewarm about the book and question if the author could have done a lot more, especially since the ending feels rushed and lacks any satisfaction. The commentary of people behaving like drones and mindlessly obsessed with technology and consumerism is obvious and has been done before; I would have liked to see more nuance or new takeaways, and I think the immigrant experience could have been better incorporated to make the book more unique.

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written post-apocalyptic story that goes back and forth between a woman in the world after an epidemic wipes out most of humanity and everything in her life leading up to it. Very compelling, nuanced protagonist. Maddening ending that could be stronger.

[Tasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I must be in the minority because this book fell flat for me and the ending was a huge let down.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Severance is a very clever, dare I say brilliant allegory and/or modern day fable/ meditation on how we (specifically urban but in general all) humans go about living our lives. This was a Millennial novel that hit the spot for this borderline Baby Boomer/Gen Xer (I flex towards Gen X if you are interested). Ma wrote a zombie novel that seems to ask why fear the zombie apocalypse when we are already zombies? Ma takes aim at our extremely fast paced, material driven, internet immersed society and wonders what's the point. She also takes aim at traditional roles, and nostalgia and the mythologies of the "past" and the struggles of the past. For me, this was a powerful novel that looks at the life we have today and ponders the relevance.

Summary:
Candace Chen is a "dreamer" brought from China at the age of 5. She has assumed a stereotypical role of the millennial. She is squandering her potential, spoiled, rather non plussed/ blasé about life and what it has in store. Her parents die in an accident that leaves her a significant amount of money to live on in NYC but the money is running out. She takes an uninspiring job at a book publisher as a product manager for Gemstone bibles. Shen flu is starting to take out large chunks of the population and her company has offered her a significant amount of money along with a few others, to continue showing up for work in the next year. Several young people take this offer while the older workers decide to spend their final days with their families. She holds out for the entire year while the population in NYC dwindles down to zero, pondering the nature of her job, her relationships, her life, her family, her future etc. She walks everywhere as she explores the abandoned city for her blog NYC Ghost. She finally leaves NYC and connects with a few survivors led by Bob an IT manager and would be cult leader. Bob finds out that she is pregnant and holds her captive. The end of the book finds her escaping to Chicago and walking which is a huge symbol at the end of the novel.

Ma takes aim at the superficiality of our urban myths

"Jonathan had become increasingly disillusioned with living in New York. Something along the lines of: the city, New York fucking City, tedious and boring, its charms as illusory as its façade of authenticity. Its lines were too long. Everything was a status symbol and everything cost too much. There were so many on-trend consumers, standing in lines for blocks to experience a fad dessert, gimmicky art exhibits, a new retail concept store. We were all making such uninspired lifestyle choices."

"“To live in a city is to live the life that it was built for, to adapt to its schedule and rhythms, to move within the transit layout made for you during the morning and evening rush, winding through the crowds of fellow commuters. To live in a city is to consume its offerings. To eat at its restaurants. To drink at its bars. To shop at its stores. To pay its sales taxes. To give a dollar to its homeless. To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?”

I definitely get the point. As exciting as it sounds to be in the city. The experience culminates to something more vacuous than invigorating. But through the quotes you can see Ma is branching out from urban living to…living. With our nonsensical, material based routines. Candace is intelligent but uninspired to do anything. She's a ne'er do well. Capable but not driven because in this tale there is no consequence to failure and very minimal benefit to success. Or rather in this tale, the benefits to success are intrinsic but the definition of success changes when the system changes. This is the system we have. If it's not what we want, why on earth is the system the way that it is? Or rather from Ma's point of view, why would we tolerate it?

Candace has a typically complicated relationship with her parents. Her mother judging her for her lack of will to succeed because she has all the benefits that her parents didn't have. Her mother forced to leave a good job in China as an accountant for America where she made wigs. Slightly resentful of the opportunities that her daughter has and doesn't take advantage. Her mother dies early and is constantly appearing in her subconscious also a key point in the novel. Her mother represents her competence, her ambition, her drive, her survival instinct.

“You’re not doing too well. You barely eat. You don’t sleep enough. You don’t do things to keep your mind active. You don’t read. She says, Only in America do you have the luxury of being depressed. She says, Change your clothes. Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Moisturize. Exercise. Get yourself together. She says, Now is not the time to give up. It’s only going to get harder. You need to figure this out.”

Candace both resents and appreciates this apparition of her subconscious in the shape of her mother.

Candace has a boyfriend Johnathan who is a "free spirit". Through him Ma examines the concepts of independence, freedom, antiestablishmentarianism. Johnathan does not want to be part of the machine.

“It was the anonymity. He wanted to be unknown, unpossessed by others' knowledge of him. That was freedom.”

He is leaving NYC and wants her to come with him. She loves him but doesn't believe that life would be good outside of the system.

“What I didn’t say was: I know you too well. You live your life too idealistically. You think it’s possible to opt out of the system. No regular income, no health insurance. You quit jobs on a dime. You think this is freedom but I still see the bare, painstakingly cheap way you live, the scrimping and saving, and that is not freedom either. You move in circumscribed circles. You move peripherally, on the margins of everything, pirating movies and eating dollar slices. I used to admire this about you, how fervently you clung to your beliefs—I called it integrity—but five years of watching you live this way changed me. In this world, money is freedom. Opting out is not a real choice.”

Constance is opting for the "dream" aka drone like existence that she also eschews but doesn't have any idea what is better.

Candance eventually joins a band of what seems to be the last folks on earth lead by an old IT guy named Bob. Bob has a lot of pretentious, pious beliefs about the patriarchy. He's a bit of a scary cult leader or would be if there were any people left. Bob is I think representative of what Corporate America tries to uphold "Christian values" emphasis on values. Though religion was not strong in this novel it definitely lurked everywhere. But what Bob was also trying to do is restore a sense of normalcy and uphold the ideas of what is good and decent and successful (crass consumerism). Bob was part owner of a mall. As an IT person, I think the concept of Bob is brilliant. IT is filled with men who think they know more than anyone about the world because they are techy. I think Ma has been channeling a less dense Margaret Atwood here. She "gets" the subtle but clever and strong satire.

The other strong theme with Severance was nostalgia. There is an old saying that nostalgia is a form of narcissism. Ma takes this concept to interesting places. Candace was evading thinking about the past. Running from memories of her life, her parents etc. A theme throughout the book was the concept of going home and being with loved ones at the end of the world. Her employers in the end tried to encourage her to go spend time with loved ones. But the flu seemed to feed on nostalgia and turned people into zombies. When they focus on nostalgia, the flu consumes them. Candace seemed to avoid this until the end of the book when she contemplates life with her daughter. I believe in the end, the flu got her through the love of her daughter and the desire to create a home based upon what she knew. When you look at it that way, this book is so unexpectedly profound. Plus it is a bit of a Millennial satire. There is this atmosphere of dissatisfaction and boredom with life and people and material things. This feeling of entitlement and underachievement and at the same time desire to please the parents and respect them. To reject traditions, old ways and routines but at the same time try to respect the sacrifices endured.

I really enjoyed Severance. The novel was quite amusing and low key. Both in it's sarcastic tone and it's unexpected depth and intellectual heft. The symbolism doesn't smack you in the face, but it's not that hidden either. I think there is much more Ma in my future. She is very smart, observant, funny and wise. I would love to know what her eyes see beyond the Millennials.

4.5 Stars happily rounded up

Listened to the audio book and read on kindle. Nancy Wu did a fine job narrating this book.

[Elaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

As usual, I'm in the minority about Severance, a plodding post-apocalyptic story about a millennial drone named Candace Chen.

When Shen Fever sweeps through the country, killing off most of the population, Candace continues to go to work at the publishing office because she signed a contract.

What else is there to do?

Her boyfriend has moved away. Her parents are dead.

Eventually, she meets up with a small group of survivors led by a weirdo named Bob, who lead them to the Facility, a deserted mall, to regroup and start a new life.

But their numbers dwindle as the fever catches up to them and Candace harbors a secret of her own that may threaten her livelihood within this motley crew.

Post apocalyptic books are popping up all over the place, which is fine and dandy, but this one was so boring.

That's my main gripe.

Who knew the end of the world was so catastrophically anti-climatic?

Let me be clear; this is not a story about zombies or the end of the world but a brief look at immigration and first generation descendants and how newcomers adapt to their new country, the freedom and its rules.

The title refers to Candace's father severing ties with China when he left to pursue his education in the USA.

When the Tiananmen Square protests erupted, the violence and bloodshed solidified her father's vow that he and his family would never return to their homeland.

This led to simmering animosity between Candace's parents and after their deaths, Candace has gone on with her life, albeit a bit without direction.

She goes to work.

She hangs out with her coworkers.

She has sex with her boyfriend.

Rinse. Repeat.

Candace's POV veers between the past, when her parents were alive and adjusting to their lives in America and when she immigrated later, and her current predicament with Bob and the survivors.

Candace is not likable; I didn't hate her but she was as boring as the end of the world.

Her voice wasn't interesting, nor was her life.

I didn't care about her job or what she did when she traveled to China for work.

I wanted to know more about the end of the world, society crumbling, the sweep of Shen fever, how sick people were, the chaos, destruction, the fear. There was some world building but not enough.

There were also strange, odd descriptions about her sexual interactions with her boyfriend, Jonathan, that felt out of place.

I guess it was to show how disaffected she is about everything, including intimacy, but the scenes felt gross and uncomfortable, which is part of the point, I guess.

I did love how the author compared Jonathan's penis to a sea cucumber. Classic! I wished I had thought of that.

The writing was really good and the premise had potential but the pace was too slow, dull and Candace's voice made me sleepy.

This book just wasn't for me.

I want scares, a survivor horror tale, being chased by zombies and/or bad guys, not a mild satire of office life or whatever this book was supposed to be about.

But then I'm dark like that.

[Jessica Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like this book was written just for me. It’s a post-apocalyptic anti-capitalist office satire that explores so many of the themes that resonate with millennials like myself.

Candace is one of the few survivors of Shen Fever, an epidemic that turns people into non-violent zombies condemned to repeat rote tasks over and over again until they slip into fatal unconsciousness. (You can sense the metaphor already, I’m sure.)

For a few months, Candace stays on at her office job—one of the few people left—aiming to fulfill her contract so she can receive the large payout she’s been promised (and possibly even get a promotion). The absurdity of this is certainly not lost: Candace is the quintessential millennial who is expected, in spite of herself, to value industriousness and professional success above all else, to the point that she’s still hanging onto those ideals as the world around her is literally ending.

Then, of course, there are the parallels between Shen Fever victims and working millennials living under late-stage capitalism, both existences plagued by a sense of meaninglessness and routine.

Eventually, Candace leaves her job, and New York City, to head west with a small group of survivors led by a vaguely menacing man named Bob. The narrative flows between this present time and Candace’s life leading up to it. Ultimately, in her increasingly precarious situation, she finds herself taking control of her life, arguably for the first time ever.

I loved this book. It’s sharp and wry and contemporary and all the things I want in a novel.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Who knew that a book about a fever outbreak crippling civilization could be SO dull? Ling Ma has talent, but this book was so haphazard and incredibly boring. It was so infuriating reading about Candace's naivety; there were multiple instances where I uttered, "she is so dumb!" while reading about her motives and inner dialogue. All the characters were mere sketches, I honestly couldn't tell you anything more than the role they play in advancing the narrative (the 'survivors' had no distinguishing characteristics other than Bob being the 'evil leader', and even that is never given any explanation). There are some hilariously awful sex scenes in this book (references to a "Schwarzenegger dick" and describing a penis as a "sea cucumber"). Oh, and the ending is a complete eye-roll inducing cliche. The premise and opening were promising, but unfortunately for the reader Severance never finds it footing. A big let down. 2/5

[Emily (Books with Emily Fox on Youtube)]

DNF at 32%

[elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

“the end begins before you are ever aware of it. it passes as ordinary.”

there is something deeply unsettling about reading about a pandemic apocalypse during a pandemic. yet, at the same time, there is something oddly comforting about it.

while every other book i’ve read in the last two years serves as escapism, there is poignant familiarity in which candance, the disillusioned twentysomething protagonist, narrates her life after civilization quite literally fell due to ‘shen fever’, an airborne fungal infection which basically turns people into nonviolent zombies. the ‘fevered’ are condemned to parrot rote habits and routines over and over until they eventually succumb to the disease.

reading this book felt like a double edged sword; it was a dangerous balance between allegory about capitalism and a reality we did not think existed before 2020. the post apocalyptic world that candace lives in feels like an eerily well paralleled hyperbole when compared to our current situation. the book is told in alternating timelines, switching between past and present. the past details candace’s life working as a production coordinator of bible publishing in new york city. the present shows candace’s life as one of the sole survivors of the fever, functioning in a cult like group led by a religious fanatic named ‘bob’.

candace’s narrative is descriptive but clinical, detailed but cold. although narrated in first person, we don’t really get an actual glimpse into candace’s mind until later chapters. she is disillusioned and stuck in the cogs of corporate america; she is ambivalent in everything she does yet does not yearn for something more or different. in this vein, severance is as a biting satire about late-stage capitalism as it is a chilling story about a pandemic a bit worse than ours.

the only times readers feel like they are getting a fresh breath of air is during candace’s trip to china and hong kong, or the chapter telling the story of her parents’ immigration to america. it reverts back to bleakness and passivity when candace narrates her daily life, pre and post apocalypse.

while each chapter has its own commentary and theme, the overarching thesis of this book lies in america’s rampant consumerism of both materialistic goods and mindless entertainment (which we can see in all the brand names and pop culture references that are mentioned) and how an individual’s neither action nor inaction amount to anything in today’s society.

ma does a brilliant job in creating a claustrophobic atmosphere with both timelines. while the present is suffocating because candace and all survivors rely on day to day survival, the past is as equally so because daily life is so heavily entrenched in meaningless routines and mindnumbing tasks that often seem as never ending as the bleakness of the world being plunged into dystopia. the way she manages to encapsulate social and cultural commentary about identity, immigration, family, and modern corporate society through dry wit and humor is masterful.

loved loved loved this book.

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻

mini review
i have to gather my thoughts but holy shit what a masterpiece.

easy 5 stars

[J.L. Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving.”

Ling Ma's Severance seems ever more relevant. What if we are already losing cultural and familial connection to our world before the zombie apocalypse (or global pandemic)? If that's the case, what would we have to fall back on? Severance is a zombie book with a lot going on just below the surface. In Ma's take, zombies aren't going after humans. Instead, their existence mirrors what they did before they were struck with Shen Fever. These reenactments actually empty their actions of significance (both before they became zombies and after). Ma's protagonist, Candace Chen, tries to make sense of a New York City emptied of people before she strikes out for a place called the Facility where she can presumably start over. Ma, however, makes it clear how difficult starting over can be. It's not just about survival.

“A second chance doesn't mean you're in the clear. In many ways, it is the more difficult thing. Because a second chance means that you have to try harder. You must rise to the challenge without the blind optimism of ignorance.”

I really enjoyed Ma's smart and dryly humorous take on zombies! 4.5 stars.


Fantastic to have LIng Ma in Wyoming!

[Sanne | Booksandquills · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, yes and yes. This was exactly what I was looking for. Just enough apocalypse to make this an eerie pandemic read, but also lots of introspection and commentary on the daily grind of office life. Read the second half in one sitting. Would recommend for lovers of Station Eleven.

*This copy was sent to me by the publisher for review.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I think this book is a case of the sum being greater than its parts. If you take it apart too much all it is is pieces that have been done before, apocalypse cliches, etc. But somehow the arrangement of the parts and the point of view make it a more enjoyable read for me than I would have expected if someone like Bob had mansplained it to me (ugh his character is so annoying and not even charismatic to pull of leading a group at the end of the world.)

Still I'm not sure it's likely to stick with me. My favorite scene is the moment Candace realizes there is nobody left, that she can't remember the last time she saw one of the guards. The combination of that with her NY Ghost blog is captivating.

The journey to Illinois is rather uninteresting to me although it reveals more about the fever. Yes, it's satire, but sometimes that trumps the actual writing of a solid story with a plot, and this book suffers a bit from that lack. I'd still look forward to reading what the author did next, and because of the way she organizes the pieces, the "ending" doesn't matter as much.

[Emily B · Rating 3 out of 5]

This didn’t live up to the hype for me. It was interesting and well written, some observations were sad but beautiful. Each main character was interesting and distinct. However I wasn’t hooked, instead I made my way slowly but surely through about 5% at a time to begin with.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not your standard zombie post-apocalypse. I liked the humor and Candace's detail-rich backstory, immigrated as a child from Fujian province to Salt Lake City, most of all. Her trip to Shenzhen for her book publishing job alone was worth the read.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

“The End begins before you are ever aware of it.”

SEVERANCE tries to be about lots of things, it is not successful in that attempt, and as a result it is about nothing. I don’t know the point of this book. Flat, underdeveloped, and yet it felt so long. The novel is also overpraised to a ridiculous degree. So many reviewers claimed it was satirical and/or very funny. Where may I ask?

As I began the book, I was thinking I was reading a clever opening. Nothing speaks to the current culture and generation like the image of millennial apocalypse survivors having to Google everything from “building a fire” or “experiencing grief”, or that when they walk through a deserted Walmart that they stock up on iPods, exfoliating body wash, and tinted moisturizers. (I’m proud to say that I don’t know what that last item is!) I thought, ‘this is brutal satire’, but then I kept reading and the incessant focus on brands and products made it apparent that it was not satire at all. A millennial wrote this book, and that is not meant as a compliment. The text features detail after detail about consumer products. In fact, the narrator brings almost every thought and/or memory around to consumerism, and yet the author has the nerve to takes shots at capitalistic culture. Can’t help exposing what she is, while trying to pretend she is something she is not. The characters in this book (I should say character as the text’s narrator is the only character who has any dimension, and even then, not much) know about a lot of stuff, and yet they know nothing of value.

The first 30 or so pages loosely held my attention, and then when I realized it was not going where it could have gone, the next 200 pages bored me to tears. I would read 10 pages and felt like I had read 60. The text features inexplicably mundane details. An example, the narrator tells us all the steps to resetting a password. What??? I will say however, that the last 4o pages are the least painful of the book, so it has that going for it.

Quotes:
• “The future just wants more consumers.”
• “When other people are happy, I don’t have to worry about them.”
• “You’re brothers-think of everything you share!”
• “You have to keep moving.”
• “But any government that granted its people freedom of speech, freedom of protest, showed respect for its citizens.”
• “To despise someone is intimate by default.”
• “If the masks actually worked, don’t you think maybe there wouldn’t be an epidemic?”
• “In these sad, uncertain times, however, it is important to be with the people you love.”
• “No matter where you go, you can’t escape the realities of this world.”

Before you give me grief, arguing that I missed the point that the author was trying to create a metaphor with a fever that essentially makes you a repetitive drone before you die, and that the difference between those fevered and those healthy is hard to distinguish…blah blah…I do get it. Interesting idea even. But the idea was bigger than the writer, and SEVERANCE has easily been the worst reading experience of 2022 (thus far). If it had not been a selection for my book club, I would not have finished it.

[Elle (ellexamines on TT & Substack)]

Alright so for the first time so far in my English major (yes, I'm surprised too) I will be fully not finishing a book assigned. This is objectively a very good book and I think that it's probably worth reading. However, hear me out: I physically cannot take finishing a novel about a virus that comes from China that everyone initially downplays, and before they can avoid the spread, it has slowly turned the entire planet into living zombies, but really the villain all along was capitalism? I have never had such a viscerally bad reaction to a book in my life. This is TOO oddly specific. I love my English professor so much, that man's Twitter is my only source of serotonin on this earth, that being said. Was it really the move to assign a novel about a pandemic right now? Personally, I don’t think I will be able to engage with pandemic content ever again in my life. Love and light

[el · Rating 4 out of 5]

seriously contemplating creating a shelf named ‘immediately-wanted-to-reread-again-upon-finishing’ for the sole purpose of putting this novel on it.

[jenny✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was not as good as i hoped, and not as bad as i feared.

candace chen is a millennial living in new york city, the first-generation daughter of chinese immigrants. for 5 years, she's worked at a book production company as the senior product coordinator for... bibles!

severance alternates chapters to describe her life in new york, but also what happens after the world comes to a pandemic-induced standstill—after the city is ravaged by a fungal infection called shen fever.

we follow candace as she navigates her relationship with a former neighbour, the ascetic and anti-capitalist jonathan; as she flies between shenzhen and nyc to coordinate the production of various bibles ("gemstone bible" targets preteen girls and comes with a precious stone!); as she remembers her parents, zhigang and ruifang, immigrants to salt lake city from fuzhou; and as she traverses a (quietly) post-apocalyptic america with a band of autocratic survivors.

several aspects of shen fever feel like a prescient echo of covid-19. though the former is caused by fungal spores, it also began in china (in shenzhen, where it gets its name) and spread through the surge of travel around chinese new year. like covid-19, shen fever has induced organizations to implement work-from-home orders; candace's company hands out n95 masks and instructs everyone to go home—but only after shen fever's presence in nyc has become undeniable. in other words, only after it's too late.

thank god, though, that covid-19's symptoms are nowhere as bizarre and perturbing as those of shen fever!

the fevered victims never recover. instead, they fall into patterns of rote behaviour, following old routines even as their bodies begin to emaciate and decay.

a saleswoman at juicy, missing half her jaw, continues to fold clothes and polish windows. an older woman repeatedly sticks her key in a lock she no longer knows how to work. a suburban family cycles through the motions of endless dinners: setting out plates, clinking cutlery, making nonsensical conversation—their mouths no longer have the capability for speech, yet they persist.

the rote routines of the fevered call to mind candace's mother in her last days: By that point, she had grown dreamy, her brain flea-bitten by an early onset of Alzheimer’s. at the same time, the fever reads like a backhanded critique of consumer culture and capitalist productivity, a meditation on the roteness of contemporary urban life. the book draws attention to the routines we find ourselves inhabiting and carrying out, intentional or not.

each of candace's anecdotes illustrate how she relinquishes agency, consciously and subconsciously, to the various routines that subsume her life. she passes 5 unremarkable years at the book production company, following an ingrained pattern of behaviours: wake, coffee, work, movie with jonathan, sleep, repeat. after the onset of the pandemic, with new york crumbling around her, these same habits structure her days.

i found the pre- and post-apocalypse chapters a little disjointed. it was hard for me to connect the candace of Before with the candace of After. in terms of tone, the book is clearly literary fiction, clearly dystopian, with the sort of sardonic irreverence that reminds me of ottessa moshfegh's my year of rest and relaxation, which also features a (somewhat nihilistic) female protag inhabiting the glimmering bustle of new york city.

but at times severance will also eschew its dark—almost campy—humour in favour of seriousness, particularly in scenes that involve candace's parents; i was reminded of white ivy by susie yang.

unfortunately, the erratic literary tone further contributed to my sense of disjointedness.

at the end of the day, this book felt like a love letter to new york. a kind of moldy and crumbling love letter, but appreciation nonetheless. the way ling ma writes about this city makes my heart hurt for a place i've never lived—

New York is possibly the only place in which most people have already lived, in some sense, in the public imagination, before they ever arrive.

...

I have always lived in the myth of New York more than in its reality. It is what enabled me to live there for so long, loving the idea of something more than the thing itself. But toward the end, in those weeks of walking and taking pictures, I came to know and love the thing itself.

...

To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning. It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?

...

The first place you live alone, away from your family, he said, is the first place you become a person, the first place you become yourself.

and:

New York has a way of forgetting you.

[carol. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allegory alert.

Ma succeeded, did well, 100% her own voice, this generation’s The Road–I think, because I won’t read it, way too depressing–but you get the gist, right? Quality writing, characterization, Metaphor Locked in Place. I didn’t precisely mean to, but this became my fiction read while I was making my way through Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and just guess which one felt more upbeat? Go on; I dare you. Double-dog, even. Yes, my perceptive little reader; the book about our fire-fly quick lives requiring us to make choices and sacrifices was downright cheerful compared to Severance. Just let that settle a minute.

“Memories beget memories. Shen Fever being a disease of remembering, the fevered are trapped indefinitely in their memories. But what is the difference between the fevered and us? Because I remember too, I remember perfectly. My memories replay, unprompted, on repeat. And our days, like theirs, continue in an infinite loop. We drive, we sleep, we drive some more.”

But I read nonetheless, focused, engrossed, intent, almost angrily. I’d take a break and find that my muscles were tense. Candace is too young, too indecisive, too amorphous and only knows what she wants when she’s in opposition. Candace, it turns out, is me.

“At work, they knew me to be capable but fragile. Quiet, clouded up with daydreams. Usually diligent, though sometimes inconsistent, moody. But also something else, something implacable: I was unsavvy in some fundamental, uncomfortable way.”

Narrative is two strands woven together, but each leaning heavily on childhood memories: Candace’s present where she is leaving New York with a survivor group; her five years in New York leading up to the pandemic that include her work at Spectra Publishing. The blurb also makes much of her being a millennial. I’m not sure it is about her generation, honestly; it sounds much like two of my besties who moved there after college in the 90s. This is more about the stage of life and the NYC experience--the corporate ladder was questionable even then, gentrification was a thing, rents were crazy high; how egotistical to think you are the first generation to face such things?

“I have always lived in the myth of New York more than in its reality. It is what enabled me to live there for so long, loving the idea of something more than the thing.”

Should you read it? Well, here’s my mental Venn for this book:



Does it pique your interest? Sound tolerable? It’s extremely well done. It was also, unfortunately or fortunately for Ma, written before the Covid pandemic, but she had her crystal ball solidly in place. It might trigger a bit of PTSD. I’ll be honest, it made a great companion book to Four Thousand Weeks. I even decided to leave my job while reading it. So thanks, Ma, for reminding me that routine and memories aren’t enough to keep us alive.

“What’s the book about? I asked. It’s about a man from a poor background who wants to better his life. Does he make it? My father smiled. He does, but it comes at a cost. There’s no happy ending.”

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Severance by Ling Ma is many things. It is the story of a young Asian woman's search for meaning, the story of a deadly pandemic, and surprisingly, a treatise on the importance of work. It is slow moving and meanders between Candace Chen's life in publishing in New York when life was normal and her life during the pandemic, after she's become part of a group moving across the country and scavenging goods.

Candace's parents died and her boyfriend left before the pandemic hit. She has no family in the United States, all are back in China. She has few friends. Before and during the pandemic, she finds comfort in her work. "It was a trance. It was like burrowing underground, and the deeper I burrowed the warmer it became, and the more the nothing feeling subsumed me, snuffing out any worries and anxieties. It is the feeling I like best about working." A life with meaning, if you have no family or friends, must be about doing.

She has a reason for living that eventually causes her to take control of her life and throw off the shackles of what others want and comes to rely on herself.

[Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

[4.5 stars]
There’s so much to unpack in this novel and so many ways from which to examine it. You can start with the obvious: as a critique of capitalism. But digging deeper, you can look into the way the packaging of memory and nostalgia in consumer products and through consumerism has destroyed our communities. Our connections to where and who we come from our tied, in America at least, so much to what we come from and how we make a living. Then there’s the immigrant perspective/experience and how that often lives within and outside of this narrative. That also ties back to nostalgia and how the memories of a place, especially that of early childhood, when you don’t live in your home country are disconnected from your present reality.

Candace, the main character, is also adrift without her parents who have died and while the world slowly crumbles around her she remains steadfast in her ritualistic ways. Her work routine compels her to move forward, never stopping to look back or within for even a moment. That grind never stops and echoes the Fevered, those affected the pandemic sweeping across the country throughout the novel turning people into mindless zombies.

It’s a book that I felt added up to something greater than its individual parts. There are elements that didn’t work perfectly for me, particularly the cast of characters in the more present day storyline (a weak villain and flimsy supporters), and a rather opaque ending (though I do appreciate how you could interpret it many different ways). But all in all I found a lot to like and even love in this novel and I definitely want to check out more of Ling Ma’s work!

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a slow burn for me, but once I got to the last 100 pages I couldn't stop. This is the first time I've connected personally with a protagonist in a long time, and whether or not you're a "millennial" this book is more important than the trendy book cover color would lead you to believe.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of elements from Severance that we've all seen before - the global pandemic which brings an abrupt halt to civilization as we know it, the few survivors trying to forge ahead in the absence of a structured society, the juxtaposition of before and after narratives. But the similarities to Station Eleven or Bird Box end there, because what Ling Ma does with Severance is fuse the post-apocalyptic survival genre with anti-capitalist satire, and it works almost startlingly well.

Both wry and meditative, Severance offers a positively haunting commentary on corporate greed and what that means for the individual, and that awful paradox of being trapped inside a system that you feel guilty having any part of. The fictional Shen Fever was pretty awful; rather than offering a quick death it would essentially turn people into zombies who performed rote tasks ad infinitum - it's heavy-handed but it works - but the most horrifying part of this novel was probably how much of the directionless millennial narrative resonated, and the amount of decisions these characters had to make at the detriment of their happiness just to survive, both before and after.

I did think the book's structure could have been more cohesive as a whole, and I felt like Ling Ma didn't really know what she wanted to do with the ending, but ultimately I loved this strong and unexpected debut. I can't wait to see what Ling Ma does next.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think of Severance as a stack of matryoshka dolls—an office satire inside a post-apocalyptic road trip inside an immigrant experience inside a millennial coming-of-age story inside an anti-capitalism tale. And if that sounds complicated – well, it isn’t. It all works together beautifully and the book seems eminently credible, even when it’s pushing the limits of fantasy.

So here are the “bones” of the story: a millennial named Candace Chen has fallen into a monotonous job, coordinating the production of Bibles with China-based sources. After work, she and her boyfriend Jonathan watch movies in his shoddy apartment. Into this numbing routine comes the Shen Fever, a fungal infection that threatens – and then nearly succeeds – in wiping out the entire population of New York and indeed, much of the globe.

Candace hooks up with a foraging group of survivors, headed by a controlling leader named Bob. They make do by foraging for goods in abandoned houses (or houses with fevered inhabitants) and in chain stores. But Candace is holding back a secret.

Ling Ma is a natural story-teller. The book sparkles with intriguing set-ups and an original premise that doesn’t put all its eggs in the dystopian basket. There is a palpable sense of suspense, a deep feeling of nostalgia, and an undercurrent of over-the-top capitalism hilarity.

I have discovered that the author has written what she knows: like Candace, she is a first-generation immigrant who once worked in Bible production and later at Playboy headquarters. From time to time, I felt this tinge of suspicion that some of the scenes were authorial immersion with a distinctive millennial perspective. Having said that, I still enjoyed the book a great deal and, in fact, read it on and off in a 24-hour period. Definitely recommended.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

***SPOILERS HIDDEN***

Severance is a blend of literary fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction that doesn't get either right. It starts with a lot of promise: An organized timeline shifts back and forth between the present-day, post-apocalyptic life of corporate drone Candace Chen, to the recent past, when she first learns of "Shen Fever" and watches it bloom into a deadly pandemic. The lack of development, though, shows how confused author Ling Ma was in how, exactly, to tell this complicated story. Her careful organization quickly fell apart as she veered into tangents. She found her way again toward the end, but it's too little too late, and the book ends inconclusively.

The bleak new world Candace moves around in is hard to understand. New York City has become a ghost town with a palpable eeriness. The same seems to be true of the few other cities mentioned. But how, in detail, did this disease turn life upside down? How wide is Shen Fever's reach? How many people have died worldwide? Aren't some countries managing better than others? Candace travels with a found-family group of nine survivors; where are the other groups that surely must be out there?

With so many unanswered questions, it's obvious Severance isn't really about a pandemic. It's about Candace and a deeper message. All other characters, especially those in her found family, are just names, given no defining features or anything to do. An intimidating group leader gets the most attention out of the nine, but here the story doesn't flash back where it counts: to show how he became the leader everyone is a little scared of, or, for that matter, how these people banded together in the first place and how Candace found and joined them. Her group enters the present-day storyline complete and fully functioning, so Ma didn't show any of the dramatic conflict that would naturally arise in a group of traumatized survivors. Any tensions among these people were resolved a while ago. The desperate work of gathering supplies, food, and vehicles has been done. Actual survival scenes showing the group in dire straits or scrounging and worrying or even just…mourning their pre-pandemic lives and deceased loved ones is missing.

This story is stoic to a bizarre degree. Only one scene shows the real, human, primal panic and sadness readers would expect a post-apocalyptic story to be overflowing with. Otherwise characters are aimlessly present, surviving with Shen Fever lurking in the background as a mere nuisance, not the imminent threat it actually is. Two or three compelling scenes show the creepy personal devastation of the illness, but these are too few, too quick, and anti-climactic because Candace and her group are never in real danger.

Readers are inside Candace's head the whole time, but it doesn't matter because she has the emotional intensity of a rock: She breaks up with her beloved boyfriend without any second thoughts or period of grief; isn't alarmed shortly afterward to find out she's pregnant by him; shows no fear of contracting Shen Fever (a terrifying illness with no cure or even adequate treatment) despite seeing lots around her succumb; robotically continues working at her boring corporate job long after everyone in the building has left or died; doesn't grieve the sudden, violent deaths of two in her found family; and isn't scared when the leader imprisons her upon learning she's pregnant. Her mind is a frighteningly unperturbed place.

The literary fiction aspect is strongly evident where Ma tried to add feeling and depth by digging into Candace's past as she grapples with her Chinese-American identity. For this, the author wove in anecdotes about this character's mom, dad, and each of her four uncles. A work visit to a Chinese factory hints that Severance's pandemic storyline exists only to emphasize the West's reliance on Chinese labor. If so, this is an inspired vision, but Ma then confused matters by adding unnecessary details about the printing of Bibles and Candace's shame over her parents' uncultured hometown. This character's ethnicity is irrelevant, and these background bits are boring. The social commentary is weak—never moving beyond the complaint phase, stuck in mere acknowledgement of a problematic situation.

I'm left feeling that the author was overly ambitious. It's as if she was trying to make a profound statement about a few different things but ended up getting none of it across well or at all. I found myself longing for so much more from this sedate story: more world-building, more drama, more atmosphere, more vigor.

Ma's writing style is enjoyable; however, she hasn't mastered the art of plotting a story, and as a post-apocalyptic work Severance is breathtakingly undeveloped. She had only the most simplistic, tiniest germ of an idea yet forced it into the complex post-apocalyptic genre. As a literary fiction, the book is too meandering and slight to have emotional impact or to make a provocative social statement. Severance would have been better had Ma committed to either thought-provoking literary fiction or thrilling post-apocalyptic fiction, not a muddled combination that fails at both.

[Brittany Bathgate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did Ling Ma get a tip-off about the pandemic back in 2018 or something?! Reading this during the third lockdown in England and the similarities between this book and reality are eerie. (Virus originating in china, N95 masks, working from home) I loved this! It's post-apocalyptic, but not in the flesh-eating zombie sense. It's clever and the humourous satire, for me, was very thought-provoking.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Put some things in perspective for me regarding global pandemics. This book was saying a lot of interesting things I think about political systems, immigration, memory, relationships, work, global capitalism, and motherhood. I didn't quite enjoy the structure or tone of it necessarily, but it's undeniably well crafted.

[Caro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an introspective, character-driven novel. I was hesitant to pick it up, but I’m glad I did.

The story follows Candace Chen as she navigates life in post-apocalyptic America. The world has succumbed to the “fever” and those who have caught it are called “fevered”

A large part of the story takes place in NYC, where Candace used to work for a publishing company, and it alternates between present post-apocalyptic America and the time before the epidemic arrived.

The novel moves at a slow pace because it takes its time describing details of Candace’s life and relationships, both in the present and in the past. At times I was confused when reading because the novel does not include quotation marks when the characters are having a dialogue. Still, even with this issue, I was able to follow the story easily.

Overall, I enjoyed it and recommend it to those who enjoy sci-fi and contemporary fiction.