Severance

by Ling Ma

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.

• ISBN10: 0374261598
• ISBN13: 9780374261597
• Publish Date: 14 August 2018
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 31 March 2023
• Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[nannah]

I have such conflicting emotions and opinions about this one. This review is going to be all over the place! For the first fifty pages I adored it … and then I swung to the other extreme. It's clear that Ling Ma can write, because certain passages just knifed my heart, but at other times the writing felt a lot less polished. I'm so torn!

Content warnings:
- ableism, fatphobia mention

Representation:
- the protagonist is Chinese American

Candace Chen, lover of routine, is hardly concerned when a new plague called Shen Fever spreads through New York City. While everyone else evacuates the city, Candace stays behind to update a hobby photography blog with details about what's happening — a blog that soon goes viral. When she can no longer hold out on her own, she is picked up by a band of survivors led by a suspicious former IT tech who promises he knows a place where they can all start over fresh. But Candace is wary of his similarity to past cult leaders, and she must decide whether to stay with his group or risk surviving on her own again.

Initially, I was struck by the writing style; it's very beautiful and unique. I'm also usually a sucker for books without quotation marks, because that often means that is written with a distinct style in mind, not just written to be pictured like a movie. However, I didn't feel that in this particular case it added anything to the book. The style did work in the beginning, in the present-tense sections, because it's so philosophical and meandering and reflective. But when the POV switches to the sections taking place in the past, it reads like any other contemporary lit, and I don't see any reason them for such a stylized choice.

I also feel a little lost when it comes to the actual Shen Fever itself. If it's (actually) a fungal disease, how does it spread? The survivors we follow use masks and gloves while in Fevered houses, but if they're taking things, that doesn't seem like enough protection, right? But this disease is also kind of not "literally" a disease, if I'm interpreting this right, so that might not even matter.

The book is definitely about capitalism, and about the unnatural and often isolated routines capitalism forces us to fall into, but unfortunately it delivers this message with a very unsubtle hand. All of the brand names very liberally peppered into the prose got old quickly, and it wasn't all that clear as to what it added — unless it was to highlight Candace's character in particular. There was this underlying critique of millennials (and "millennial culture"), which I didn't understand, because it was so different to my life and the lives of my own millennial friends. So to me it felt more like an outsider taking shots at my generation using stereotypes. However, Ling Ma is also a millennial, so who knows? My friends and I could be the outliers.

However, she definitely has talent. She can write when she wants to. There was a moment when I was so affected by the story and the writing that I had to stop reading and just take it all in for a moment. There's no doubt that I need to read what else she's written, or what else she'll write next, because although this novel isn't for me, it's well written.

[Quirky Cat]

3 1/2 stars

Severance is the debut novel of Ling Ma, and it is perhaps the quirkiest apocalyptic novel I have ever read. It is one part doomsday and one part satire. And the end result is something totally original.
A plague is spreading across the globe. If you catch it, you’ll find yourself in a cycle of behavior. Every day, every hour, every minute, you’ll continue to do the same thing. You’ll repeat this single action until you wither away into nothing.
Candace Chen recently lost her parents, and now she’s faced with the apocalypse. Not ideal, by any standards. But she’s a survivor through and through, and that means she’s going to find a way to keep herself alive (or healthy, however you want to look at it) for as long as possible.

“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.”

Warnings: This one should be fairly obvious: there is an illness infecting the world. It involves graphic descriptions of bodies wasting away.

Severance was a totally unique and utterly clever read. I honestly mean it when I say that I’ve never read anything like that. It was a satirical form of an apocalypse novel, which until now I didn’t realize was a thing!
Candace is an interesting character. She doesn’t react to tragedy or loss the way you might expect, but perhaps that is the reason why she was so capable of surviving this horrible event. Her life before said event was fairly run of the mill, but her personality made her stand out, even then.
While there were parts that fascinated me about this novel (such as the core plot) there were other parts that I just found myself scratching my head about. I’m okay with the source of the disease never being answered – that fits in okay (after all, a scientist would have to survive in order to make any discoveries on the matter). But in the end, it felt like Candace hadn’t actually come all that far. Actually, it didn’t feel like there was much of an ending at all. More like the story simply…stopped.
In a way, maybe that ending is completely appropriate for Candace’s story. But it did leave me feeling like I was left hanging. Perhaps that is just me and the mood I was in at the time of reading this. I think the real reason I’m disappointed by the ending is that I saw so much potential in this novel. Like I said, it’s seriously unique. Oh well. I will be curious to see what Ling Ma comes out with next.

For more reviews check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[elvinagb]

Beautifully written but the ending. I wish it had of left me with a bit more hope for Candace. She's a survivor so I can only hope for the best for her.

[mary]

This book was exactly what I needed to start the new year. It was a slow burn book at the beginning for me that rapidly changed to a very quick read. This book has so much to offer since it is well-balanced novel. It blends apocalyptic world with an interesting character study. The story follows a young woman as she travels by caravan from a deserted New York City to the outskirts of Chicago. On this journey she reflects back on her life and what has brought her to this end journey with a group of strangers. I loved that this book was able to blend different tones from dark and sad to incredibly heartwarming and funny. Satirical in nature but also an honest and an enjoyable story.

[lovelybookshelf]

There's been a lot of hype around this book, and for me, it definitely lived up to it. So many times with post-apocalyptic fiction, I've wanted more details about what it was like as things were deteriorating. This delivered. I also enjoyed the immigrant story aspect, as Candace shares her and her parents' experiences, and I loved how the author subtly ties those feelings in with Candace's present situation.

[empressbrooke]

I feel like the book I read was not the book that was advertised.