A great read, timely yet fun. Brooklyn hipster Candace finds herself suddenly navigating the aftermath of an apocalyptic plague which has normalized behavior that on first thought would seem completely unacceptable. There are zombies, and themes ranging from global warming to loneliness.

Shen Fever, a fungal infection, spreads across the globe. Initial symptoms mirror the common cold, but as the infection worsens, infected lose themselves in familiar loops of activity. One of the “fevered” for example, appears to be reading, but her book is upside down, and she is regularly drinking moldy juice. Unable to break free of the loops, the fevered stop eating, drinking, bathing, or doing anything but acting out these rote activities. There is no cure, and the condition is fatal.

Candace Chen, who immigrated to the United States from China when she was six, works at Spectra, a company that helps publishers produce books like Bibles and coffee table books in Asia. Her specialization is Bibles, and she has nightmares about the thin papers used in Bibles getting stuck in the printing press. When Shen Fever hits New York City, her boss wants to keep the office open and selects Candace as part of the small team that will stay--in exchange for an exorbitant bonus.

But when New York City empties, she joins a group of survivors led by the controlling figure, Bob, who had worked in information technology before the fever hit. Bob leads the group to a mysterious Facility where they will be able to survive, though Candace fears that she may be in danger.

I became engrossed in Severance and really enjoyed reading it. However, there is so much going on in Severance, it is hard to condense, and, truly, I am still trying to work out all the implications of the narrative. In addition to the post-apocalyptic narrative, the book is an immigrant story about Candace’s parent’s painful adjustment to life in the United States. It is also a critique of capitalism and the inequities of global trade. Ma makes connections between the routines of employees and the loops of the fevered, and while there is comfort in the familiarity, there is also the risk of being subsumed. The narrative is peppered with phrases that cleverly recur and reinforce the theme of repetition.

In many ways, Severance is my favorite kind of novel: well-written and provocative. It has all the fun (to me at least) of apocalyptic fiction but is elevated by the well-drawn characters, interesting back stories, and thought-provoking themes.

This was different to say the least. It's an interesting mix of post apocalyptic, anti-capitalist, millennial fiction. Ling Ma gives an interesting take on how the world would operate if a fever pandemic swept the globe.

We follow Candace Chen as she navigates life as the fever sweeps thru New York. With stereotypical millennial dry humor and just plain stubbornness, she eventually becomes one of a few survivors who join forces and make their way to the "Facility". It reminded me a little of that season on The Walking Dead were everyone was trying to get to Terminus. Although the Facility isn't run by cannibals, those in charge don't exactly have everyone best interests at heart.

All in all a good read. It definitely kept me interested. Thank you to NetGalley for providing and ARC for review.

A gripping, post-apocalyptic story about a young girl, Candance Chen, who is one of the few surivors in a future world where people become “fevered,” essentially turning into shells of their former selves who walk around continuing their normal routines but without any actual brain function. The book traveled back and forth through time—a feature that contributed immensely to my liking of the novel—from when Candance travels with a cult-like group of survivors in the post-apocalyptic world, to when began her first office job in the pre-apocalyptic world, and back again to when she stayed in New York well-past when she should have, continuing her normal routines like going to work and posting photos to her blog like one of the fevered despite her health. I was surprised by how much I liked this, as post-apocalyptic novels are not usually my favorite. But this was well-written and well-structured, and Candance was such a multi-faceted character that I was kept reading not to find out more about the post-apocalyptic world, but really to find out more about Candance.

I am in the minority on this one. DNF! Oh gosh I hate that I couldn't do it...

While at times the writing could be beautiful the pace was slow and the MC never even came close getting my attention. This thing read like an autobiography wrapped up in a mix of dystopia and romance, sort of. Some might find that mix interesting, I am not one of those people.

A general note, I'm not a fan of the no quotation marks, who started this trend and why? Please make it stop.

I only made it through the first 25%,, I took a break between the first 20% and the next 5% to see if maybe I was just being crabby or moody about it but after the additional 5% I still wasn't invested. There are a lot of people out there who loved this one, I'm just not one of them.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy of this ebook in exchange for an unbiased review.

Candace Chen is a millennial daughter of Chinese immigrant parents who are recently deceased. She spends her days in a NY office tower doing routine work at a publishing company that is producing the Gemstone Bibles which are manufactured in China to cut costs. She doesn't mind going to work, it fills her days since her parents have died and she looks forward to spending evenings with her boyfriend watching movies.

When Shen Fever, a plague of biblical proportions, hits NY from China, at first Candace barely notices, she soon becomes one of the last few employees as victims soon become zombie-like creatures as a result of their mundane jobs. While survivors like Candace know they won't be able to make it on their own forever, she and others must decide whether "The Facility", a place to escape to and begin anew is the right thing for them.

First off, this book is not the kind of book I would normally be drawn to, but, I liked the premise and wanted to try it. The writing is excellent. The author does an amazing job of weaving the story of Candace's parents immigrant experience, their life and beliefs with what she is experiencing in the present. The writing is so funny at times as well, from office satire to apocalyptic tale, it's a quirky look at alternatives to rote office jobs. I thought the first person narrative worked well and fell in love with Candace and the social and political aspects of this story. If you are up for something a bit different, be sure to try this one.

Hands up if you’ve never been infected by stories of post-apocalyptic survivalism or zombies. Surely most of us have read or watched a high- or lower-brow version, from Cormac McCarthy to The Walking Dead. (BBC’s Survivors, 1975, anyone?) Yet, familiar as these cultural tropes have become, Ling Ma approaches them afresh in her debut novel.

Hers is a chilly story of alienation and foreignness, as experienced by twenty-something Candace Chen, whose parents’ migration from China to Utah when she was a child has left her emotionally stranded and alone. So, when the Shen Fever strikes, wiping out the entire US – and possibly world – populations, excepting a handful, adult Candace feels scarcely less detached than she did before, when living a desultory millennial life in New York City.

Ma’s vivid prose does a fine job of evoking Candace’s remote point-of-view, whether before or after cataclysm: a visit to her family in Fuzhou; a business trip to Asia, to visit Chinese printers, where Candace’s rusty language skills and ‘other’ life experience inhibit communication; glimpses of childhood, showing her stranded between an engaged father and a punitively unhappy mother; early adult years in Brooklyn, with friends and lovers and 80s-themed dinner parties; and then the slow, creeping effects of mass mortality. At all of these stages, Candace is both a participant and an observer, later a photographer too, for whom the camera lens acts as a metaphor for another degree of separation.

As one of the few survivors of the epidemic, Candace, all but alone in New York City, finally leaves town to join forces with a disparate group traveling towards a safe house near Chicago, often raiding passing homes – a process called ‘stalking’ – in search of food, clothes and other essentials. This process sometimes turns up fever victims who haven’t died but are instead trapped in repetitive routines – laying tables, folding clothes – their mindless activities reminiscent of the workers Candace encountered at the demanding printing works she would visit on business overseas.

Ma has referred to her book as ‘an apocalyptic office novel’ and its critique of capitalism, done slyly yet tellingly, is a central ingredient in her fusion of narrative themes. There’s suspense in the gothic, survivalist scenes, complete with twitching, maggot-infested corpses. There’s contemplative analysis in Candace’s musing on the oddities of her world and her place in it. There’s a battle of wills, between our steely heroine and the autocratic leader of the survivors. And there’s the sardonic take on routine, work, wage slavery and consumerism.

All of it adds up to a remarkable package, thought-provoking and compelling, as it ricochets between the familiar and the unexpected. Most memorable, though, are the scenes of New York, emptying invisibly as its population migrates or fades away. Empty stores, echoing streets, flooded subway tunnels. Candace records them for her photo blog, called NY Ghost, and as the internet flickers and falters, so does a monumental, scooped-out version of modernity.

We say goodbye to Candace in another city, equally ruined, in which she is alone again – or maybe not – and on the run, heading to a destiny of her own making. Will she survive, this oddly equipped loner in a stripped down world? Who knows. But we do know we will miss her.

“We kept running, even though no one was chasing us. The sky was lightening so quickly. On the freeway, pines and bare branches brushed against us noncommittally. Everywhere we ran, we were touched. We couldn’t not be touched, even if we preferred it that way. The world just felt unbelievably full and dense, bursting.”

Incredibly inventive, paralyzing, and full of millennial cleverness. Ling Ma is one to look for, indeed.

I feel pretty “meh” about this novel. It’s not that it’s bad or uninteresting, it just maybe wasn’t for me. As the blurb says, it is dark and a little satirical. Character-wise, I didn’t feel like I really got to know any of the characters very well, even Candace, the main character from whose perspective we read the story. Everyone felt a little like a trope and so I couldn’t really bring myself to care about any of them. This novel reminds me of those teen horror movies from the late 90s in the darkness of the humor and the themes.

It was the cover that drew me to this book--I am a little leery of end-of-world etc. novels at this point, though I seem to be the only one--but I loved the cover. Pink slip indeed, ha!

Anyway, I went in intrigued despite myself and thought this was a fascinating take on a certain genre (and a sly ribbing of it as well, which I liked a lot) and a quirky look at what makes us who we are. Different in a good way.

I'm not sure that there's been a more perfect book for me recently. Severance is a post-apocalyptic anti-capitalist office satire inside of a immigrant millennial coming of age story. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but somehow Ling Ma weaves all of the parts together to create an entirely credible sounding story.

Candace Chen seems to be the last person in New York after Shen Fever afflicts nearly everyone. Her story as she joins a group of survivors is interspersed with what happened before. It's clever and compelling. I appreciate the chance to obtain an advance copy. Thank you to the author and to net galley.

Ever wondered about the connection between globalization, your office job and the zombie apocalypse? Well, no worries, Ling Ma figured that out for you. Her debut novel is a mixture between immigrant family story, corporate satire, and a dystopia about a global health crisis - and while the text might not be flawless, it sure is addictive and intriguing.

Twentysomething Candace Chen, who immigrated to the US with her family as a child and is now orphaned, works at a publishing company where she is overseeing the production of Bibles. As the fabrication of books is much cheaper in China, it is her task to work with contractors there, making sure the materials and the quality of the merchandise meet the clients' standards. When Shen Fever spreads from the Shenzhen area in China to New York, turning its inhabitants into zombie-like creatures who cumpulsively repeat their everyday routines while they start to rot until they finally die, Candace flees and, in order to surive, joins a group which is dominated by a religious radical named Bob - you got to love this weird set-up.

Ling Ma cleverly interweaves her ideas: Candace's immigrant parents became religious in the US in order to finally make friends at church, while their daughter now makes sure that the production of the holy book is as cheap as possible in their old homeland - at the expense of the Chinese workers. Shen Fever seems like a biblical plague, taking revenge for the health issues the Chinese workers are suffering in order to keep Western goods cheap, and it spreads from the workers to the consumers. Bob's fever is his bigotted religiosity that he instrumentalizes to ruthlessly oppress his group of survivors - it doesn't become clear whether he himself actually believes what he preaches.

And then there are the zombies - or wait, are they really zombies? At the core, they are an extreme version of an office drone: Just like Candace repeats the same routines over and over again as part of her work schedule, the zombies cumpulsively do the same until they die. There is no cure for Shen fever, but is there a way out of the uniform lifestyle? Candace's parents have dreamt of the promises of Western capitalist culture when they came to the States, while her boyfriend Jonathan tried to opt out of it - their stories are also told in the book.

The novel is told in fragments, jumping between narrative strands and timelines, but it is very easy to follow. I had a lot of fun reading the book, which tackles a rather common topic in an uncommon, smart and creative way. I'm curious what Ling Ma will do next.

I was unsure what to expect of SEVERANCE at first. The post-apocalyptic genre has been saturated recently. It has never been one of my favourites. However, I'm so glad I gave Ling Ma's fantastic novel the fair treatment. It tackles not only relevant issues my peers face today: office politics; a world where people's faces are buried in technology. I read this in a sitting and a half; just couldn't put it down.

This satire is SHARP. 5 stars.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley in exchance for an honest review.
Candace Chen is a young woman who emigrated from China to the USA with her parents when she was six. Many years later, in 2011, as Candace has grown into an adult and settled in a relationship and a job in Bible publishing, a case of Shen fever erupts all over the world. As more and more people get affected by the fever, the world comes to a standstill. But Candace is lucky enough not to have come in contact with the virus and on escaping New York she finds and joins a group of survivors who are planning on rebuilding the world by themselves.
I did like this novel. The writing is simple and delicate and a pleasure to read. It differs from most apocalyptic stories in the way that the world becomes so quiet and calm and deserted as more and more people die. Candace ends up joining this group of survivors because she has nowhere else to go. At the head of the group is Bob, an extraordinarily ordinary man who took it upon himself to lead this group of people and get them to safety. Bob has no business managing the group but somehow, they’ve all accepted him as their default leader. Candace will have to learn to abide by Bob’s rules and live in a collectivity.
Severance is above all a tale of routine and a critique of capitalism. Candace has settled into a routine of going to work, doing the same job day in day out, then going back to her boyfriend’s in the evening to watch a film; sleep and repeat. She has no ambition to pursue her passions and is mainly motivated by money which is why she ends up being the last one to leave her office, long after everyone has either fled the city or died, because she was promised a big sum of money if she could work her contract until the end. The apocalypse that is wiping the world clean is also very routinely. Indeed, when affected, people start doing the same tasks over and over again until they pass out from exhaustion. The fevered are completely non-violent, they just end up doing the same chores mindlessly for days, forgetting to eat and clean themselves. And even when Candace does end up fleeing New York, she still ends up in a routine. The group of survivors she joins repeats the same patterns everyday: driving, camping and looting, day after day.
There is also a slight critique of capitalism in the book. For example, the company that Candace works for get their products manufactured in Asian countries because it is cheaper, and even when people start dying from the fever in China, the company still tries to get the most they can out of the surviving workers. They don’t care about the health issues afflicting the workers so long as they can get the products they need.
The parts of this novel I liked best are where Candace is reminiscing about her childhood in China. I found them to be really vivid and I almost felt like I was being transported there. The parts where Candace ends up being one of the only people left in New York also reminded me of the film I am Legend; especially the way New York becomes a ghost town and you don’t meet anyone for miles apart from the odd fevered person.
Overall, I liked the book. I didn’t think the world of it but I do like the idea behind it, and the simple and poetical style in which it is written. If you like science-fiction, and post-apocalyptic stories, then check this one out.

Alternating between the past and present, Candace finds herself navigating a world of fevered people -- not quite living or dead, nor zombie. I like Candace and her observations. I like how the story weaves together her past and present life as well as a nostalgic part of her life that still feels realistic and measured. While there are dramatic parts to the story, it's wholly introspective, yet compelling and funny in a dry way.

I heard about this book and was very excited to receive an e-galley from Netgalley! It'a an "apocalyptic" novel in a style similar to Station Eleven (Emily St John Mandel) and Zone One (Colson Whitehead): the world goes from being sophisticated place with internet, video games, blogs, electricity, etc. And all of a sudden, a fungal infection wipes out most of the inhabitants of New York City, and Candace, the only child of two deceased Chinese immigrants (she is also an immigrant herself) finds herself on her own...well almost. There are a few twists to the story, which weaves back and forth from the past, to the nearer past and into the present situation Candace finds herself in. She joins a gang of rag-tag survivors, disparate in their backgrounds and trying to survive physically and emotionally. Candace is an American who is working as hard as she knows how to support herself when all this happens, which brings me to the obvious message of this book: what does all THIS (the internet, this review, this life) matter, ultimately? Does, the money you earn at your job matter? Does commercialism matter? Does religion matter? This short book is about all these things, and is a sparkling example of creativity spurred on by an otherwise ordinary life.

A biting commentary capitalism and immigrants that makes this an extraordinary post-apocalyptic novel. See review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2480677005

Severance straddles several seemingly disparate literary aims and somehow really nails pulling them all together:
☑ the journey of a young professional adjusting to corporate work despite dreams of living as a creative
☑ a raw, emotional nod to immigrant experiences in America
and of course,
☑ the crumpling of society into a dystopian urban wasteland -- with the added bonus of a believable epidemic and a hot new take on zombies!

The story is told in short bursts by piecing together glimpses into the past and present. You'll be reading about raids for supplies with a team of millennial survivors and have the next chapter dive into what was required of a project manager supervising foreign manufacturing for a book publishing company or how companies react to catastrophe through social media (hint: hashtags). Even though I couldn't put it down, most of it wasn't particularly fast-paced or thrilling -- it's more languid, deadpan musings than anything. Overall, a fun read that resonated with me in all the right places.

Infrastructure, electrical grid, internet, all gone, and she’s in a group on the road to The Facility.
Then there is the Shen Fever, with symptoms of memory lapse, headaches, disorientation, shortness of breath, fatigue, malnourishment, lapse of hygiene, bruising on the skin, impaired motor coordination and fatal loss of consciousness.
The Shen fever transported to the States from China, the main characters native home.
In this tale: “The first case of Shen Fever was reported in Shenzhen, China, in May 2011.”

The main protagonist works for a publisher that produce specialty book projects with an office for publishing in New York and printers in southeast Asia.
She emigrated with her parents to America from China aged six.
She takes you through reflections on the past and the present the life of hers, the immigrant tale and struggle all in first person narrator, the whole collapse of things, the capitalism, the complexities of the world and its wonder and its fallings, unraveling one’s self from the whirlwind of the mind she was once, with a new birth in ways, a reinvention and appreciation.
Scenes evoked vividly before the reader, the whole whirlwind of her mind with the strange in a strange land gone topsy turvy, in a mesmerizing, hypnotic, meditative and poetically strung together words with lucidity and satire in the narrative.