So I really love Post Apocalyptic books, and this one is no exception.

Candace Chen lives a solitary, methodical life in New York City. She barely notices the first signs of the Shen Fever outbreak. I won't ruin the specifics of Shen Fever, but suffice it to say, this is a very metaphoric disease.

As Candace tries to leave the city, she meets up with a small band of survivors, led by Bob, and IT tech turned cult leader. The group is heading towards the mysterious Facility.

The story alternates between life before the fever, life during the early days of the epidemic, and the journey towards the facility.

As I mentioned above, this book is about more than the Apocalypse. Ling Ma delves into the immigrant experience, the modern day life of methodical routine, the concept of "home" and nostalgia. All in all I was very satisfied with this book.

A dark, extremely funny satire about today's corporate workforce and the pitfalls of nostalgia. Ling Ma's book is riddled with hilarious dry humor and she writes an interesting character study in the book's narrator, Candice, who has to survive an apocalypse.. A spectacular debut, I can't wait to read Ma's next work.

The publisher description, “An offbeat office novel turns apocalyptic satire as a young woman transforms from orphan to worker bee to survivor”, led me to expect something light and comedic. While Candice Chen has a deadpan, wry voice that I really liked, to call this novel offbeat or satirical is way off – it’s much more nuanced than that, and all the better for it. The story moves back and forth between her pre- and post-apocalyptic life, growing up the daughter of Chinese immigrants, living and working in New York City, and surviving with a small band of others in a depopulated world. The apocalyptic world of this novel is a fascinating one to me, but the heart of the story is really Candace's life before the 'end'. The book never gets melodramatic because Candice Chen herself is the opposite of that, but it’s so much more than an ‘office novel’ turned apocalypse.

Another first-time, female author-- are we sensing a thread here? I guess this is the season of debut fiction for me, and hey, I'm not mad at it. I'm especially not mad at it in this case, because Ling Ma's first effort is pretty effing phenomenal. There's always a risk when reading an author's first work because they don't have a track record to give you an idea of what to expect and there's no foundation for lending the author the benefit of the doubt. Add to this that the new author likely hasn't yet honed their craft, and may not have even discovered his or her voice yet.

None of these are the case with Severance, which paints a bleak world with beautiful strokes and flows with ease between timelines. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is that is so special about this book, because it's not showy or complex. It possesses very little plot or action, few characters, and the characters who do populate the world aren't all that unique or interesting. I should also note that while I enjoy relationship-based/grounded Sci-Fi, I'm not a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction. So what in the hell did I like so much about this book? I think the best way to describe it would be that it struck a perfect balance: between dealing with external, global issues and an individual woman's interior life; between being beautifully written and literary, without being pretentious or gratuitous; between being contemporary and timeless. 

The atmospheric quality of Severance is immediately apparent, as Candace's world is wrought with precision and poetry. The settings of 2010-era New York City ("its charms as illusory as its facade of authenticity") and post-apocalyptic Midwest are visceral, and the time period Ma chose-- which makes this more a work of revisionist history than a possible future scenario-- helps to ground it in reality. I'm not sure whether it would've been more effective had it been placed in a near-future, as there was a part of me that stayed outside the story partly because I knew this hadn't actually happened.

What stood out to me were the little philosophical flourishes and wonderings, a la "The internet is a flattening of time. It is the place where the past and the present exist, on one single plane... It is the place we go to commune with the past." How beautiful and relatable is that? 

And what about this: "Let us return, then, as we do in times of grief, for the sake of pleasure but mostly for the need of relief, to art." It's as if Ma is reaching out to the reader, grabbing her by the heart, with the full knowledge that she has sought solace in art many times before, and may very well be doing the same in reading Severance. Maybe that interpretation is too meta, but I don't think so. I think Ling Ma knows what she's doing, conversing with the reader so closely, Candace just a thin membrane separating the author from her audience. 

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Buy Severance on Amazon


P.S: What do you think of the cover art? I got a digital copy, so perhaps it looks better in print? I found it underwhelming-- which may actually have set me up to have very low expectations, which then allowed me to enjoy it even more, as I was surprised.

A literary take on a post-apocalyptic novel sure to be nominated for a literary award or two. Severance is the story of Candace, a Chinese immigrant and millennial, who is trying to just live her dull life when a real apocalypse hits.

At first, Candace is in denial and continues to live in an eerily empty NYC. Eventually, she leaves in an old NYC taxi and collapses by the side of the road. A group of other NYC survivors take her on a trip to the Facility, where the nerdy leader, Bob, says he has a crash pad perfectly suited to the apocalypse he knew was coming thanks to gaming and Internet conspiracy sites.

I enjoyed the beautiful evocative prose of this novel the most. The plot works but some of its satirical aspects seem forced. I get that Candace’s life is an endless repetition of the same tasks with no knowledge gained from them. Why does the epidemic have the same symptom? It is like getting hit over the head with her point. Also, I would have liked characters other than Candace to be more fully fleshed out. Most seem like stereotypes like Bob the nerd. It is hard to care if something bad happens to a stereotype.

While I don’t think this will appeal to most Walking Dead or World War Z fans because it is too slow as literary fiction often is, it will be a fine change in setting for literary fiction fans. Since I am more the first choice, I give Severance 3 stars. I wanted more horror or more satire. However, your star rating may vary depending on your genre preference.

Thanks to the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an advanced copy.

"After the End came the Beginning. And in the Beginning, there were eight of us, then nine—that was me—a number that would only decrease. We found one another after fleeing New York for the safer pastures of the countryside. We’d seen it done in the movies, though no one could say which one exactly. A lot of things didn’t play out as they had been depicted on screen."

Severance manages to be both post-apocalyptic and fantastically contemporary at the same time, taking the best parts of both genres and blending them effortlessly.

Severance follows Candace, a 20-something living in New York City before, during and after an outbreak of epic proportions sweeps New York and soon the globe. The outbreak, known as Shen Fever, named for it's city of origin, starts just like the common cold, coughing, headaches, disorientation but ultimately leads to the infected becoming drones of their former selves. Walking through the steps of their day-to-day lives, moving a computer mouse around on a dead computer, eating non-existent food off of clean plates, watching static on TV for endless hours. Shen Fever is fatal. Don't let the lack of brain-eating or violent gore let you think that Severance is missing the characteristic goosebumps inherent to the zombie genre. Ling Ma manages to keep the suspense despite the genre bending. Severance isn't just about the zombies, however. The narrative bounces before and after the End. The "before" is nothing other than an incredibly contemporary New York City.

Severance is like the anti-love letter that all New Yorkers want to write about their city. Ling Ma's intelligent observations and commentary ring absolutely true to me, having lived in New York myself for the better half of a decade. Ling Ma exposes New York and also America as consumptive and self-serving, taking advantage of others under the guise of "just doing my job" as Candace puts it all the while feeling beautifully readable and far from preach-y.

East Asia is also hugely influential to the story on multiple levels. Candace is originally from China herself, having moved to the US with her parents in their pursuit of greater ambitions. It's a great source of tension for her parents, her father feeling that leaving Asia is integral to his personal success and her mother feeling alienated in her new country and distanced from her family. I loved getting to see these bits of the immigrant family struggle and appreciated the depth it gave to Candace in such a short span of pages.

East Asia is also where the production is outsourced in Candace's company for its cheap labor costs and materials. Candace is often left uncomfortable in her position as production coordinator (her company produces mass amounts of bibles to sell in the United States) as she is often the one dealing first hand with the unsuitable labor conditions to which her buyers willingly turn a blind eye. East Asia is also the source of Shen Fever, sending it overseas in the crates upon crates of cheap goods being shipped into other countries.

I loved Severance, I could go on. I loved it for the thrills I got from the End times but more so for the sharp social and political commentary. Ling Ma writes with such ease and clarity I find myself wondering how I wasn't able to find the words for these thoughts myself.

This was a slightly strange but very interesting novel, part of it taking place in a kind of newly post-apocalyptic world where most people have succumbed to a virulent disease, and parts of it taking place in the time before, all from the perspective of a young woman named Candace. The pre-apocalyptic parts, which I think actually comprise more of the book, vary from sort of a satire of millenials and corporate culture, to the story of how both Candace and her parents first came to America from China. The author definitely knows how to create a mood, as even during the slow parts there's just something kind of dreamy and hypnotic about all of it. It's not on the level of Station Eleven, but a good read if you enjoy that type of literary post-apocalyptic fiction.

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

It’s the timeless narrative of a young person adrift in the city, combined with the more timely dystopian nihilistic survivalist tale. Sometimes it works together, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s an interesting book. 3.5 rounded up.

I received this book as a digital ARC from Netgalley. I highly recommend this if you have ever worked in a office. It is hilarious!

A very clever book! Candace could have come off as annoying and privileged and a stereotype but Ling Ma managed to elevate her into a heroine. Set primarily in 2011 but told also in flashbacks, it's a dystopian pre and post apocalyptic tale (I know- but trust me). She kind of missed when Shen Fever took over and decimated New York- which isn't surprising in a way. Now, however, she's coping with the aftermath and has latched onto a group of survivors who might not all have the group's best interests at heart. No spoilers. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This is a unique, well written entry into the genre- I was surprised how much I liked it and you will be too.

The key thing, we reminded ourselves, was never to stop, to always keep going, even when the past called us back to a time and place we still leaned toward, still sang of, in quieter moments.

Candace Chen, daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, wasn’t there at the Beginning when everyone else was stalking Wal-Mart, googling survival, none of that. She was living on routine, one of the last to leave New York, on automatic working in her Manhattan office on a bible for teens. As it all falls apart, she is like a ghost keeping record with photographs of New York on her blog. Solitude is not made for survival. It is a Yellow Cab that becomes her ‘in’ with Bob and the group, but is it her salvation? The End, she assumed, was near and as others fell ill around her with Shen Fever, she waited to become infected herself. It didn’t happen. Surely she wasn’t much different, like a record skipping in place, doing the same thing over and over, that’s the illness. Regretting the choice she made to stay behind, even when her boyfriend encouraged her to leave New York with him, his plan to sail a yacht with his friend. The world is crumbling, it’s interesting that it takes an apocalypse for her to leave, so marred in her routine that not even love could budge her. Her hand is forced by circumstances this time. Why is she immune? None of us are, are we? Trapped in our jobs, noses in our phones, so many days often like a repeat of the one before. Wrapped up in nonsense, so much processed garbage we eat and put in our heads. Well…

The Facility is a place where they can all begin again, if they make it there. Bob has big plans, it’s vital they follow rules! It’s much like immigration, if you think about it. There is this idea of a new world born out of destruction, fear of the unknown, unsure who to trust. Hell is a shopping mall for me though, and it’s clever that she chose that location. You could put a lot of meaning into that, consumerism, a mall could be as self-sustaining, self-contained as she was while working on the teen gem bible. Her boyfriend was sick of that very world, here she is still trapped in it. Too, you can’t ‘opt out’- like she feels about Jonathan when faced with his idealism. It would seem the only way to overhaul the way we all live the whole world around is a pandemic. We are all of us so deep in this mess.

On their journey, they sweep through houses, past dead people for supplies. Memories are poison. How much worse when ‘stalking ones own homes’? It’s strange and eerie how people behave when infected. Candace revisits the past, everything that led her here, so the novel isn’t just another postapocalyptic struggle. Her love for Jonathan and her decision to stay in the life she didn’t even much like is too familiar to many of us. Why don’t we break away? Why do we cling fiercely to repetition, to the devil we know?

Bob is adamant they will do better this time, even if he has to go to great lengths to save people from themselves and keep them as one would prisoners. As if people won’t just ruin it all again. We are creatures of habit, more than we admit. The story Ling Ma shares about the members of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day saints, their exodus, the only choice that remained for them to leave with their old world in ruins isn’t lost on me. Her own parents being immigrants too had to venture into the unknown, to America. Honestly, the novel is more literary fiction to me than sci-fi, I rather liked her flashbacks, the ‘pre-apocalyptic’ memories. The pacing might not work for readers that prefer action. The world stands still, and we are left with the destruction of our own making. Candace has her own second chance that may well have nothing to do with Bob and his visions for a new future but will she have the strength?

You can’t dive too deep into the past, nor can you live a life of meaning floating along the shallows.

Publication Date: August 14, 2018

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

This book completely hooked me right from the start. First, the idea of a photo blog called NYC Ghost is a genius concept. Candace was a completely fascinating character. Even when her actions were illogical, they made sense to me (at least, her doing these things made sense). The idea of nostalgia being a trigger, that people get stuck in loops, is worth exploring.

I am a huge fan of dystopian fiction and this book definitely snuck up on me in a good way. I was blown away by this post-apocolyptic story wrapped around the story of a Chinese family's immigration to America. When a majority of the population is wiped out by a fungal infection, millennial manhattanite Candace Chen and a small group of survivors travel from New York to the Chicago suburbs in search of a place to start over.

This book reminded me a lot of THE BOOK OF M by Peng Shepherd, which also came out this year. However, this book felt much more intimate, focused on Candace's immigration backstory and a deep dive into her life in New York before the plague, as well as the relationships and friendships she developed over the years. I loved the scope of the story and Candace's character development (there are large sections that delve into book publication and family history); Candace isn't a super likable character, but she's smart and perserverant and interesting and relatable. There's wish fulfillment in the idea of "what would you do if you had NYC all to yourself" or the idea of living in a deserted shopping mall. I also liked the author's casual writing (no quotations, very fluid). I would absolutely recommend this book to people, I'm guessing it will be one of my favorites at the end of the year.

Severance is the hotly anticipated end of days tale by newbie author Ling Ma. It’s a provocative look at the future which shows the dangers of getting caught in a meaningless present and being obsessed with a sentimental view of the past.

This story shifts back and forth in time between chapters but for the sake of clarity and brevity I’ll be discussing it in linear form in this review.

When Candace Chen first moves to New York, the situation is both idyllic and disconcerting. Living off the inheritance from her parents, she wanders the town taking mediocre pictures and finding herself. She posts the photographs to a blog she's created called NY Ghost, feeling the title to be self-descriptive: The Ghost was me. Walking around aimlessly, without anywhere to go, anything to do, I was just a specter haunting the scene. She fears that if her parents could see her, they would call her disaffected. She thinks they may be right. Even at parties or events, she tells us: I was like a homeless person in my own house. I was enjoying myself, but it was an insulated enjoyment. I was alone inside of it.

Candace comes by her dissociative disorder naturally. She is convinced that her father moved from China to America for “the anonymity. He wanted to be unknown, unpossessed by other’s knowledge of him. That was freedom. “

She knows she needs to break out of the malaise caused by that lifestyle. Eventually, she gets a job at  vanity publishing firm, where her position involves coordinating the production of novelty bibles. It is intriguing to her to produce the same product over and over and only change the packaging. The antics of the companies selling the merchandise show how it is consumed but never ingested, and their business practices in no way reflect the teaching contained within their commodities’ pages. Candace is good at her job, even if it leaves her feeling dissatisfied.

Then Shen Fever strikes. At first, it’s a small thing. Contagious but seemingly isolated, with simple, preventive precautions offering false security. No one seems very concerned initially, least of all Candace, who has her own problems to contend with. Her boyfriend wants to leave the city and makes a half-hearted attempt to ask her to go with him. He wants to get away from it all: the endless fake shops, meaningless jobs, and slavery to the American capitalist system. Candace chooses not to accept his offer, so she is perfectly placed to watch the emptying of this American epicenter as the fever slowly consumes everyone around her.

Shen is an unusual form of zombieism in which the victims die slowly from starvation and physical negligence as they perform familiar tasks over and over. In a particularly poignant scene we see a young girl sitting in her family’s library, paging through a book she no longer has the mental capacity to read. Emaciated, with sores that attract insects, she can no longer care for herself or even let others care for her. All she can do is peruse the same story over and over till her life ends. Or someone ends it for her.

Candace stumbles upon that young girl while with a group of survivors, all of them, like her, unprepared for the apocalypse. In life, they had worked jobs in advertising, printing, production and fashion.  Now, under the leadership of an odd man named Bob, they are headed to the suburbs of Chicago, to a building he owns there that they call The Facility. It is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the big box stores and outlet shopping malls whose supplies will ensure the group’s survival.

The author has an absolutely amazing grasp of her craft. Her prose, a sheer delight to read, is crisp, clean and crystal clear, and she weaves information into the text naturally, diligently and thoroughly. Her plot is intriguing and her ability to create a scene near awe inspiring. Every time we change views, whether we’re at a party in a small New York apartment or touring a factory in China, her characterizations and setting, and sheer magic in conjuring the moment make you feel as though you’ve entered the text and are experiencing what Candace is experiencing.

The group of survivors left me endlessly curious as to who they are, who they had been and what would happen to them once they reached their destination.  There is something almost sinister about Bob, though his behavior is primarily benign and innocuous. That is another of the strengths of the story; we learn names and passing details of the people who surround Candace, but the images are blurred. We know them, but we are also wary of them. The knowledge we have isn’t deep or clear enough to let us picture what they will do next and the situation is so fraught with possible danger that we fear what might happen. That lack of knowledge is a strength in that it emphasizes both the fact one can never really know anyone and that these peculiar circumstances would create an instinctively survivalist culture, where people automatically look out for number one and don’t really trust those around them.

But that lack of knowledge is also a weakness. Characters weave in and out of the story leaving no impact on the reader; even scenes which should have been traumatic left me unmoved. I could appreciate that something awful was happening on the page, but it was happening to strangers, people I didn’t know well and whose situation was so far removed from my own that I couldn’t relate to it.  The prose was such that the image was clear, but it was a picture that drew no emotion from me.

Another flaw is that the story lacks subtlety. Candace is the mouthpiece for half a dozen insights on society, all of them delivered with a jackhammer, staccatoed press of words that does not allow for nuance. I knew her opinion but learning it did not invite me to think about or examine my own thoughts on the same issue. That was especially disappointing given the nature of the zombieism; the rote activities performed by the infected and the effect nostalgia could have in terms of the onset of the disease should, perhaps, have encouraged more introspection than they did.

Ultimately, Severance is an excellent zombie story that takes one of the more realistic looks at what might happen if society were to actually begin crumbling around us. If you are a fan of apocalyptic tales at all, I would encourage you to give this one a try. It removes the romanticism, the thrills, the heroism and the adventure and makes you take a long hard look at how very unprepared most of us are for that possible reality. It also reminds us that we will likely be the perpetrators of our own demise.

Buy it at: Amazon/Barnes & Noble/iBooks/Kobo

Candace Chen is the narrator of this narratively complex, sometimes satirical, sometimes profound, and sometimes horrific apocalypse story.

We discover through weavings back and forth through time that a weird fever is spreading through the world. Candace, an only child, recently lost her mother She came to the USA from China when she was six years old and eventually settled in NYC. When the Shen fever starts growing, she tries to hang onto the mythic city until it’s no longer possible, and then she joins a group traveling and hoping to survive.

The prose is Joycean in its graceful parabolas, stitching past and present, thought and dialogue. Sharply funny at times, always insightful, it chills the spirit when remorselessly detailing the fever, but I think it reaches brilliance when delving into family history, specifically that of her mother.

It’s difficult to discuss as the structure is . . . unique. This is the sort of literary science fiction that should make a huge splash in the awards world.

Fascinating, rich in detail, and a disturbing, thought-provoking look at work, capitalism, and how quickly we all adjust to new normals.

Personally, I loved this book--everything about it.

For me, it hit all of my sweet spots. There are great scenes in a post-apocalyptic world that our society kind of slowly slid into, a trip to "the facility" where a group of survivors hope to flourish, some looming menace and small acts of violence, and (my favorite) banal scenes that walk us through how one gets through the business of living in the midst of everyone else dying.

Interspersed within these scenes of the present are NUMEROUS flashbacks to the past. I suppose some people might find these scenes boring, but I loved them as well. Through Candace's eyes we get to learn more about her family, her upbringing, her parent's death, her cultural background, her falling in love, and most of all her quest to find some sort of life for herself--a life she continues to cling to even when everything has fallen apart. It's because we know her so well from these scenes in the past that the scenes in the present really resonate.

In some respects I felt like this book was written for me (though I'm not Chinese American, a New Yorker or a Millennial.) I worked at Contempo Casual and wore many of their dresses. My mom used Clinque. I love end of the world movies where everyone heads to a place like "the facility." I worked in the publishing industry. I'm an introvert who would totally go live in empty offices during the apocalypse.

I'm not sure if it's those factors that made me feel like the book spoke to me or if it was simply the quality of the writing. I just know I found this to be a compelling story about a fallible, complex human. You don't need to have walked in her literal shoes to know that she's an interesting character to follow.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm a sucker for near-future, dystopian fiction; most of it isn't as beautifully written as this novel. I loved it.

Severance is a few different kinds of stories at once. It is the story of immigration, of international trade under late capitalism, of a 20-something finding herself in New York, of a dystopian present, and, ultimately, of survival. Ling Ma weaves these threads together effortlessly and with a strange charm, following Candace Chen as she navigates the dull routines of office work, of unsatisfying relationships, of immigration from China to the US, and of Shen Fever, which wipes out most of the world's population.

She still keeps coming to work after most of the population of New York has succumbed. Why? Because she signed a contract. Ma describes 20-something life in New York, its precarity, and its lonely pleasures, with gorgeous specificity and a dry wit.

Severance deals with routine, memory, nostalgia, and the loops of habit that tie us to our homes and to one another.

Satire can be tricky to pull off but I think Ling Ma does it. It does require some suspension of belief (she doesn't notice people fleeing NYC?) but overall the writing it tight. I'm not one for fantasy books but this one was engaging.