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. “A stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring.” –Michael Schaub, NPR.org “A satirical spin on the end times– kind of …
“A satirical spin on the end times– kind of like The Office meets The Leftovers.” —Estelle Tang, Elle
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR * The New Yorker (“Books We Loved”) * Elle * Marie Claire * Amazon Editors * The Paris Review (Staff Favorites) * Refinery29 * Bustle * Buzzfeed * BookPage * Bookish * Mental Floss * Chicago Review of Books * HuffPost * Electric Literature * A.V. Club * Jezebel * Vulture * Literary Hub * Flavorwire
Winner of the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award * Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction * Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award * Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel * A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 * An Indie Next Selection
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.
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If you’re a millennial who’s already subconsciously counting the days until the end-time, you’ll find something comforting and also chilling in Ling Ma’s writing. At turns humorous and horrifying, I felt like this book painted an eerily accurate portrait of what societal collapse can look like — the ways that media, government, and other structures of powers can fail us, and most importantly the ways that we can fail each other. I can confidently say that this is my favorite apocalypse novel, and definitely one of the best reads I’ve read this year. I’d highly recommend this for fans of Zone One and Station Eleven.
@lahsaiez yelled at me for not writing a review for this so I have edited to comment: This book is not like anything I’ve read, but if I were forced to make a comparison I would call it millennial-immigrant-Station Eleven. It is very good and also has a soothing pink cover, so it would look nice featured on Instagram/stacked with other books next to a potted plant/carried as an accessory.
This was an eerie yet deeply thought-provoking book to read in the midst of an actual global pandemic. I really enjoyed it! Beautiful reflections on identity, society, and purpose.
Wow. What a way to end my reading list this year. This book is eerily prescient about a global pandemic, and includes everything you ever wanted in a book: office politics, the immigrant story, mother-daughter relationships, psuedo-Zombies…I could go on but just let me say it was a startling and engrossing read and I devoured it
This dystopian future was original and poignant. I was drawn in to the story, and it kept me hanging on until the end. I was left wanting more.
Ling Ma has given us a terrifyingly plausible vision of our collective future, one in which our comforts have become pathology and our habits death ― and, in her protagonist, a hero who doesn’t know if she should be seeking salvation or oblivion. And yet, somehow, Severance could easily be the funniest book of the year. It’s a brilliant, deadpan novel of survival, in this world and in the precarious world to come.
This is the story of a pandemic that kills off most of the world. Shen Fever has taken the world by storm – originating in China – and spreading and turning people into minless “zombies” once the fever hits. People have barely a warning when the become sick. These zombies do not see to attack or are after people or brains, or the common zombie world tactics. No – these zombies, once they get the fever, are stuck in whatever routine they were last doing. Over and over again until they finally just waste away.
Candance, a millenial who was in an average job in New York City, is one of the last people to leave the city once the fever takes out most of the population. The book goes back and forth between life before the pandemic and her life right after it takes out most of the population. Candance tries to figure out where she fits in with her new group of survivors and what she needs to do to take care of herself.
This was an okay book. Candace drove me crazy. She was overly stubborn and did dumb things considering she wasn’t a kid, but an adult. And the way she was written seemed like the author was an antimasker. Constantly complaining about them. I mean – right now we are ALL complaining about them, but she took it to the next level. The worst part of the book was the ending. It just stops. There is no wrap up. No Epilogue for what happens to Candace slight in the future. Nothing. Just a really weird ending where it feels like the author just didn’t know where to go so she just wraped up the story.
The only saving grace for me with this book was the zombie take. Something different. Not canibals for once. Peaceful people that didn’t try to kill anyone else. A refreshing change.
I would skip this one, though. I listened to it and it kept me entertained on my drives around, but it wasn’t great.
This post-apocalyptic story follows Candace Chen before and after an international epidemic turns everyone into zombies performing rote tasks until they die. The author weaves in Candace’s backstory effortlessly as she becomes one of the last surviving residents in Manhattan, sets of to find help, becomes a prisoner, and escapes with the help of her dead mother’s spirit.
This pink-covered novel is the zombie-pandemic-road trip book you weren’t expecting.
I love you Ling Ma. Severance is one of most sublime books I’ve ever read — taking the apocalypse narrative and turning it on its head. Ma raises questions of what it means to have a home, how we cope with our choices, and the potent threat of nostalgia all tied into an exhilarating commentary on capitalism, consumerism, and the modern millennial. Whew! That sounds like a lot but the pages turn so quickly. After all, zombies are the perfect pace-makers to any good novel.
I’m sure many of you have seen Youtube video of Bill Gates predicting the current global pandemic. Though Severance was published in 2018, Ling Ma’s ominously bleak novel is even more on the nose, eerily similar to what we are experiencing today during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the story, the disease is Shen fever, a fungal disease that begins in China and soon spreads worldwide. At first, people believe it’s a hoax, overhyped and overblown, but as more people become fevered, everything begins to shut down. Candace Chen, a first generation Chinese-American, works for a publisher in Times Square, and witnesses first hand the closure of the city that never sleeps. Vowing to complete her contract at work, she finally flees ghost town Manhattan with a secret only she knows. When she joins a band of eight other survivors, she must decide if she should share her secret and whether it will change her chance of survival in this cruel new world. Told in alternating before and after type chapters, this book is haunting, smart and eerily close to home. Ma raises questions about consumerism, the meaning of family, and the value of work. Like other readers, I found the ending a bit rushed, but that didn’t negate the incredible power of the story.
Not sure it was a good idea to read Severance while on lockdown during the COVID-19 Pandemic, but boy did it make it prescient and a bit surreal. I would wake up in the morning, having read before falling asleep, not sure which apocalyptic situation I was dealing with. I loved Ma’s descriptions of an empty, decaying New York and the way the Shen fever took over in a very gradual way. Information was not believable or trustworthy and before residents knew what to fear, it was almost too late. The flippant way in which revelers in the bars and restaurants ignored the mayor’s warning about a major hurricane was foreshadowing of what was to come. I loved Candace’s determination to fulfill her parents’ immigrant capitalist dreams and how their death gave her a certain freedom during the Shen fever situation. I highly recommend!
I loved the originality and commentary on “office life monotony,” and nostalgia. Easy read, really entertaining, and a pretty book cover!
Felt like the ending just left you hanging – but not in a cliff hanger sort of way. My reaction when I finished was… that’s it?
For those who love an introspective book that really makes you think, it’s a knock out. For those who want to be strictly entertained, given resolution, not so much. For me, who likes a little from column A and little from column B, it was good.
It is the kind of book you’ll still be thinking about long after you’ve moved on.
I’m still puzzling over the themes in this book that combines a zombie apocalypse, an immigrant story, and a coming-of-age tale set in NYC. It certainly makes me think more about the routines I perform mindlessly every day, especially the whole checking-and-deleting-email ritual. Yet the most poignant chapters for me were the ones about Candace’s past, especially her mother. An ambitious book that makes me want to see more from the author.
A cross between a dystopic novel and an immigrant novel. Well-observed.
Four stars is generous; three is snarky, but I couldn’t quite get into the main character’s story–except in the dystopian parts. The backstory was of a self-indulgent, entitled twerp, and I wish more of the book had been focused on the dystopian world she found herself in. That seemed almost glossed over, and the ending was too unresolved for me.
If you like post-apocalyptic novels with a twist, you’ll probably enjoy this novel. Sometimes sardonically funny, sometimes end-of-world serious, the story is told through the eyes of a young woman as she experiences the end of civilization while staying fully committed to her professional life working for a publisher in NYC (the story is told using leaps backwards and forwards in time, so don’t expect a linear story). The novel has all the requisite post-apocalyptic plot devices: a mysterious fever that starts in China and spreads globally; fleeing from an empty city; meeting up with a disparate group of survivors searching for a new promised land; a charismatic yet violent leader who demands submission. It may sound like any number of novels, but Ms. Ma really has fun turning this tale on it’s head and making a pointed commentary on the nature of modern life, social isolation, and the thin line between being zombies and modern Americans.
I devoured this book in a day – there is so much to love here, the indictment of the work-to-death culture, Candace’s relationship with her mother, the backstory of the MC’s parents as Chinese immigrants to the US, Candace’s addiction to routine and work. For some reason, the different parts of this book just fit alongside the apocalyptic end of days plot. The deadpan tone and the bleak, tired voice set a perfect tone for overall feeling of resignation that permeates the entire work. I enjoyed this book so much, I messaged a friend and demanded she start reading is ASAP so we could talk about it. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys a well-written story