Review - Severance

Severance
by Ling Ma
release date 8/14/2018
304 pages
4 out of 5 stars

According to the publisher, “An offbeat office novel turns apocalyptic satire as a young woman transforms from orphan to worker bee to survivor 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 halt operations. The subways squeak 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.”

At the beginning of this book, I really did not care for it.  Before I became engrossed in the story, I was really distracted by how heavy-handed the author was in trying to paint the main character, Candace, as an ‘outsider;’ someone who’s different, and proudly so.  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the scene of a dinner party full of hipster-type characters, eating shark fin soup, getting far too drunk, and talking about how cool and edgy their party was.  I was very close to giving up and letting this book be a DNF (Did Not Finish in “bookstagram” speak), but I’m glad I didn’t!

It takes a little while to get into the swing of Severance, but once you do, it’s hard to put the book down!  The narrative alternates between flashbacks to Candace’s life before Shen Fever spreads and her present day struggle to leave an infected New York City and find a way to move on after a modern-day plague.  After my initial misgivings, I came to appreciate how well-written this book actually is.  The author carefully balances revealing information both about Candace’s past and present-day so that we only understand what is happening and why moments before the plot plays out.  I was seriously on the edge of my seat, reading as fast as I could to get to the end of the book!

For me, Candace progressed from being almost distasteful to a main character that I was really rooting for.  The ending is open to the reader’s interpretation, and I prefer to think that our main character finds a happy ending.

If you watched The Walking Dead, you will find a lot of similar plot lines and themes, but this book is different enough from The Walking Dead to make it worth reading.  For those who were too squeamish for the zombie-lover TV show, Severance has far less blood and guts, but still a few scenes of violence.  

I really found this book to be unique, so if you are looking for something different than what you typically choose, I think you’ll enjoy this one!