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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.… (meer)
susanbooks: Ma takes Whitehead's neoliberal zombie narrative further, making for a more satisfying read, but I'm not sure I'd have appreciated Ma's without Whitehead's.
When I started reading this book, my thoughts initially were: oh no, another post-apocalyptic dystopian novel. I nearly abandoned it a few times for that reason. I am not a fan of that genre. However, when more of the story began to focus on the narrator’s life leading up to and including The End, as this particular apocalypse is referred to, I was drawn into the story. Ling Ma is an excellent writer. I was disappointed with the rather, in my view, abrupt ending, and I am not really sure if there was a point at all, or if there was meant to be a point, so I could not give the book five stars. The four stars are based on the strength of the writing alone. ( )
Not so different a premise to be found here from that of Station Eleven. Albeit grittier than Mandel's offering, not too gritty and very readable. A portrait of a young Asian-American woman living in NYC when an illness caused by a fungus, not a virus, (but still from China) pretty much decimates the world population. Probably this nightmarish theme is deeply embedded in our psyches, since epidemics have occurred at regular intervals. No pretty ending here, but open-ended. I'm not sure that was the best idea, actually, it feels like a writer taking the 'tough' stance because this was as far as they wanted to go. ***1/2 ( )
A page turner. I read it in a single day. Dark. But interesting in its strange prescience (written in 2018 about a pandemic ) takes place in New York City, and the whole book has a reverence and love of cites, New York in particular. About belonging, home, family. Very moving.
I started this one while pregnant, and had to put it down. The experience of an abusive situation is so real and correct that it deserves some kind of content warning, but the narrator is great, and so herself, that you can endure with her and her simultaneous detachment and ability to drive real meaning from random events. ( )
very good, love ma’s style of writing and ability to jump through different stages of candace’s life. novel also speaks to the issues of consumerism and the disgraces of capitalism. where's the sequel though ( )
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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