Severance

By Ling Ma

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250214998
• ISBN13: 9781250214997
• Release Date: May 2019
• Publisher: Picador USA
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

After COVID, that part doesn't' really feel like satire anymore.

Funny how this book was written before the COVID pandemic because Ling Ma absolutely nailed the strange feeling of working through what seemed like the end of the world. Severance is a satire of the modern workplace, the routines that bind our daily lives, and the nostalgia that keeps pulling us towards the past. Ling Ma has an astute eye for the small cultural details that make up our lives. Her way of writing made this book a breeze to go through. I also loved her twist on the usual zombie apocalypse. Instead of turning people into violent monsters, they are trapped in familiar routines, endlessly repeating habits. It makes you wonder how trapped we are in our own routines. There's a lot hidden underneath the surface. Immigration, capitalism, family, work, consumerism, nostalgia, and our attachment to routine all keep folding into one another in this book. Ma rarely states any of it bluntly. The satire works because so much of it just feels normal. Ling Ma also described places incredibly well. I could vividly picture Candace Chen moving through New York and eventually toward Chicago. The places she describes feel incredibly lived in. Yet, one of my biggest gripes about this book is how much of a passive, disconnected narrator Candace Chen is. It often feels like the world happens TO her rather than her having much effect on it. I understand why Ma wrote her this way. It makes the commentary much stronger. But it also made parts of the book feel slower than I wanted them to. And maybe that's what make Severance works as well as it does. The end of the world isn't always exciting. Sometimes you just wake up and cling to whatever routines that make life feel normal. 3.5/5. Rounded to 4/5.

This is why I love to read. I tend to favor fiction that alternates between past and present tense, the immigrant/minority experience narration, female authors, and post-apocalyptical themes. Severance was all that and more; I never wanted it to end!