Author: Ling Ma
Blurb: Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. 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 quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.
Me: Eerily relevant and beautifully poignant, Severance was one I absolutely tore through. Such an incredible exploration of what we value in our contemporary world and what we need to be aware of going forward.
The Ups: The first thing that struck out to me about reading this book at this particular time was how freakishly real it was. About a fungal disease from Southern China that leads into a worldwide epidemic and eventually The End, the description of a world falling apart in the face of a medical disaster rang so accurate to what I'd seen with the coronavirus pandemic. What was amazing was seeing how much of Ma's descriptions were actually accurate to what had happened- from people making fun of the masks at the beginning to things like Broadway closing- it made me realize how well she'd imagined the possible reality.
Thinking about it further, however, I realized that the genius of the presence of "Shen Fever" in this novel is not just that it has a ton of current relevance but that it actually serves as a complex idea about the cult of productivity & capitalism that will eventually "plague" us. Without spoiling too much, there are two main important pillars of this idea: one, that when the pandemic does hit, people desperately cling to routine despite there being no reason to, and two, that the main symptom of Shen Fever is mechanically running through daily routine without any consciousness. Essentially, the way people attempt to escape the pandemic is routine, but the pandemic is routine itself.
Another big part of the novel that is subtly but powerfully explored is Candace's Chinese-American identity. "Severance" is a reference to her state of isolation, cut off from any country and a real sense of identity and family, and the scenes where she returns to China for her job and where she remembers her parents were the most moving for me. The idea of conformity & success exists in everyone, but is particularly strong in the Asian American/immigrant community, and Ma's exploration of this identity was so well done.
For a novel that explores such big ideas, I feel like it's really easy to get lost and bogged down by the details. Instead, the pacing and writing remained perfect throughout- I devoured the whole book.
The Downs: The only part that really disappointed me was the ending. It's so unfortunate, because I felt the whole story was going so strongly till then. I do think that there didn't really seem to be a solid ending possible (as it often feels with apocalyptic novels) but still, I didn't entirely buy into Candace's current situation (don't want to spoil, but her biggest responsibility by the end of the book).
Rating: 4 kisses!
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