Severance: A Novel
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 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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Community Reviews
some interesting thoughts on attitudes of hard work and keeping our routines in america’s workaholic capitalist world. some of the routines in this book which are perpetuated by the fever seem beautifully sad (like dinner with the family) whereas others seem like a disappointment and waste (the store clerk who organizes luxury bags). our mc is not yet fevered in the beginning of the book (no spoilers about what happens or doesn’t happen by the end!) yet we see her continue seemingly senseless routines. asks: what are we doing with our freedom? and more!
recommend. talk to me about it!
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, umprompted, on repeat. And our days, like theirs, continue in an infinite loop. We drive, we sleep, we drive some more.
The end is nigh and Candace Chen is still going to work. She's typical corporate drone, working in cheap Bible manufacturing submerged in the everyday routine, so when the Shen Fever hits she just forges on. But the disease cannot be contained. People get sick or flee the city, work stops and services come to a halt leaving immune Candace completely alone in New York City until a group of survivors find her. Led by a self styled messianic leader, with promises of a safe place to settle in, the group might pose more danger to Candace than the disease.
This book was published in 2018 but the similarities to the Covid-19 pandemic cannot be ignored, to the point that I wondered if Ling Ma is secretly a seer. Both diseases start in China, they have similar symptoms at first glance, people wear facemasks, the world pretty much shuts down, etc. If you're still feeling the effects of the pandemic then I don't recommend picking this up. The book also lacks any quotation marks which would usually annoy me but in this case it works in giving the story a dreamy vibe. The author also uses it quite sparingly since this is mostly an internal narration.
Ling Ma constructs this lovely atmospheric vibe-y cocoon of narration that drags the reader in. It's poetic and dreamy yet cemented in reality. It's a book that happens in the past, the present and the future at the same time. This is unmistakably personal, influenced by the author's life and it shows in the way the writer explores the themes of identity, belonging and family. A critic of capitalism and routine, I could easily connect with it and Candace. The way she clung to normality and the monotony of work resonated with me, sometimes the world is ending and you just can't deal with that. Where it lost me a bit was with the group of survivors and their journey. I understand adding a bit of conflict and drama to the story but Candace's interior world was so rich that this was a harsh break from the chapters in the past and the exploration of her psyche.
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