Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she 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. 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 quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.
Review:
Severance by Ling Ma was very different. I am not sure I really liked it. I found it to be slow and the characters flat. The present time of the book was the most interesting. It was really annoying that no quotations were used when someone was speaking. I thought it was a very interesting concept especially with everything we experienced with COVID-19.
About the Author:
Ling Ma is author of the novel Severance, which received the Kirkus Prize. Her work has appeared in Granta, Playboy, Vice, ACM, the Chicago Reader, Ninth Letter, and others.
She was born in Sanming, China and grew up in Utah, Nebraska, and Kansas. She holds an MFA from Cornell University and an AB from the University of Chicago.
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