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Severance by Ling Ma

Sci-fi

Severance

Debut
YEARLY LOOK-BACK

by Ling Ma

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Quick Take

This inventive satire about the end of the world as we know it is one we just didn't want to miss in 2018.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Nonlinear_Timeline

    Nonlinear timeline

  • Illustrated icon, Quirky

    Quirky

  • Illustrated icon, Literary

    Literary

  • Illustrated icon, Millenial

    Millennial

Synopsis

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?

Why I love it

Look, I want to be a good book-mom here and say that I love all our selections equally. But the truth is, there are a few reads from this year that I absolutely adored—For Better and Worse and An American Marriage come to mind—above all the others. And the book I loved most of all in 2018, the queen of the stack (if you will), is Severance.

The story has two plotlines, a Before and After. Before: Candace Chen, a twenty-something year old in New York City, toils at a totally unglamorous book production job, so mired in the details of Bible manufacture (polyurethane and sateen, anyone?) that she doesn’t realize a sudden pandemic is ringing in the apocalypse. After: Candace and a ragtag group of survivors flee west, trying to avoid encounters with the 99% of the world that the plague has reduced to (harmless) zombies—and scavenging for food, pills, and marijuana.

I don’t normally dig post-apocalyptic books because they always seem to devolve into the same stomach-turning quagmires of lawlessness and starvation. But in Severance, the end of the world is signaled not by tribes of fearsome cannibals, but by the gradual dismantling of corporate life; emails go unanswered, office branches are closed, and one by one, the great tentpoles of capitalism fall. That’s why I loved this book—it’s not so much scary as absurd, and more thoughtful than action-driven. It’s I Am Legend for the plugged-in, globally conscious, thinking woman. I could not be more obsessed.

Celebrate AAPI Month
Babel
The Three-Body Problem
Lunar Love
Gifted & Talented
Independence
Here After
Six Days in Bombay
The Fox Wife
How to End a Love Story
Banyan Moon
Dragonfruit
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Kaikeyi
A Song to Drown Rivers
Peach Blossom Spring
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
Immortal Longings
Severance
The Cartographers
The Storm We Made
The Leftover Woman
Sister Snake
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride
Tomb Sweeping
What We Kept to Ourselves
Advika and the Hollywood Wives
Camp Zero
Immortal
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
Paper Names
Afterparties
Bronze Drum
The Dark Forest
The Ministry of Time
Vilest Things
Five-Star Stranger
The Lotus Shoes
Death’s End
Celebrate AAPI Month
View all
Babel
The Three-Body Problem
Lunar Love
Gifted & Talented
Independence
Here After
Six Days in Bombay
The Fox Wife
How to End a Love Story
Banyan Moon
Dragonfruit
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Kaikeyi
A Song to Drown Rivers
Peach Blossom Spring
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
Immortal Longings
Severance
The Cartographers
The Storm We Made
The Leftover Woman
Sister Snake
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride
Tomb Sweeping
What We Kept to Ourselves
Advika and the Hollywood Wives
Camp Zero
Immortal
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
Paper Names
Afterparties
Bronze Drum
The Dark Forest
The Ministry of Time
Vilest Things
Five-Star Stranger
The Lotus Shoes
Death’s End