Severance (novel)

Last updated

Severance
LingMa Severance.jpg
First edition cover
Author Ling Ma
LanguageEnglish
Genre Post-apocalyptic fiction
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
August 14, 2018
Publication placeUnited States
Media type Hardback
Pages304
ISBN 978-0-374-26159-7

Severance is a 2018 post-apocalyptic novel by Chinese-American author Ling Ma. It follows Candace Chen, an unfulfilled Bible product coordinator, before and after an incurable infection slowly obliterates global civilization. Severance explores themes of nostalgia, modern office culture, monotony, and intimate relationships. The novel, Ma's debut, won the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction [1] and was included on many prominent Best Books of 2018 lists.

Contents

Setting

Severance takes place in an alternate history of the United States up to the end of 2011, before and during a pandemic of the Shen Fever, a fictional fungal infection caused by Sheniodioides originating in Shenzhen, China. Real world events such as Occupy Wall Street unfold differently due to the Shen Fever pandemic.

People infected with Shen Fever repeat old routines compulsively, without consciousness and until death. There is no cure for the fever, and its spread eventually leads to total societal collapse in the United States. Some people are inexplicably immune to the fever and try to survive during the slow apocalypse.

Plot

The narrative follows Candace Chen after societal collapse due to the Shen Fever pandemic and in flashbacks to her earlier life. Candace and her parents emigrate from Fuzhou, China to Salt Lake City in her youth. In her twenties, Candace drifts through New York City, living on her inheritance from her parents following their deaths, before acquiring an unfulfilling job at a Manhattan-based publishing company called Spectra, overseeing the overseas production of elaborate design variations of the Bible. In the early days of the pandemic in 2011, Candace discovers she is pregnant after splitting with her boyfriend, Jonathan, who is disillusioned with the city, consumerism, and capitalism, and plans to sail to Puget Sound.

As businesses shut down as the pandemic worsens, Candace accepts a lucrative contract with Spectra to be one of the few to continue to work in the office until a certain date, because keeping the main office open is good for the company's image. Having only distant relatives in China, Candace feels little impetus to flee the city as most others do to be with family. Eventually she is the only employee left and is no longer contacted by her superiors. Per Jonathan's parting suggestion to revive her old pursuits in photography, she documents the final days of a deserted New York City's collapsing infrastructure on a blog called NY Ghost, which outlasts major publications and news outlets. When shocked by the realization that she has fulfilled her work contract, Candace is one of the final survivors to escape the city in late 2011.

In the present, a group of other immune survivors finds Candace near death in a New York taxi cab on the shoulder of a highway in Pennsylvania. The quasi-religious group, under the domineering leadership of Bob, is traveling towards "the Facility," which Bob promises to be safe. On the way there, the group follows Bob's rituals to "stalk" houses for supplies, killing (“releasing”) any living fevered people inside. A member of the group who was seemingly healthy succumbs to Shen Fever while visiting her childhood home, leading Candace to theorize that nostalgia is somehow related to the mindless routines of the fevered.

The survivors arrive to find that the Facility is an abandoned shopping mall in suburban Illinois, which Bob co-owns and spent much of his youth in, and begin to make a new home there. As punishment for rebellion and due to the discovery of Candace's pregnancy, Bob imprisons her. Candace begins to hallucinate the presence of her dead mother, who helps her realize that her safety is only ensured until the birth of her baby. When Candace finds Bob, now fevered, in his nightly routine of walking around the mall, she is able to steal his keys and escape. Candace takes a car and heads for Chicago, planning for the future.

Characters

Pre-pandemic

During the pandemic

Post-pandemic

Themes

The New York Times' review stated that Severance, "offers blatant commentary on 'dizzying abundance' and unrelenting consumption, evolving into a semi-surreal sendup of a workplace and its utopia of rules." [2] [3] Ling Ma began the novel while working as a fact checker for Playboy , a job she held from 2009 to 2012. [4] It began as a short story, written in her office during her last few months there; after her layoff, it became a novel which she wrote while living on severance pay. [5] She took four years to write it, [6] and finished the novel at Cornell as part of the work in her MFA program. [7] She said that she watched George Romero films while working on Severance, and also The Walking Dead . [6]

Ma said she "felt pressured to write a traditional immigration novel" while in the MFA program at Cornell, but instead decided to write about otherness and alienation via the trope of zombie apocalypse. [8] Ma's main character is, like her, a first generation immigrant. The New York Times review states that "laced within its dystopian narrative is an encapsulation of a first-generation immigrant’s nostalgia for New York." [9]

Reception

According to the review aggregator Book Marks, Severance received "rave" reviews, based on 19 reviews. [10]

It was a New York Times Notable Book of 2018. [11] NPR's Michael Schaub said it is, "A fierce debut from a writer with seemingly boundless imagination" [12] and "A stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring." [12] The Chicago Tribune called it, "a gripping bildungsroman in the midst of an apocalypse." [13]

It was included on annual Best Book lists at Elle, [14] Marie Claire, [15] Refinery29, [16] Buzzfeed, [17] BookPage, [18] Bookish, [19] Mental Floss, [20] Huffington Post, [21] A.V. Club, [22] Jezebel, [23] and Vulture. [24] Electric Literature included it on a list of possible winners for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. [25]

BookPage called it an "astounding debut novel." [26] Refinery29 included it on "These Post-Apocalyptic Books Will Freak You Out", saying, "Ma creates a convincing portrait of woman slightly disconnected from the world, even before the virus." [27]

Awards

YearAwardCategoryResultRef.
2018CHIRBy AwardsShortlisted
Goodreads Choice Awards Science FictionNominated
Kirkus Prize Fiction Won [28]
2019 Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlisted [29]
BookTube PrizeFictionShortlisted
Friends of American Writers Award Adult LiteratureWon
Locus Award First NovelShortlisted
PEN/Hemingway Award Shortlisted [30]
VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Won
Young Lions Fiction Award Shortlisted [31]
2020 International Dublin Literary Award Longlisted

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References

  1. SEVERANCE by Ling Ma | Kirkus Reviews.
  2. Hitchens, Antonia (November 21, 2018). "The End Is Near in Two Dystopian Debut Novels". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved June 29, 2019.
  3. "11 New Books We Recommend This Week". The New York Times. November 30, 2018. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved June 29, 2019.
  4. Ma, Ling (August 10, 2018). "Crying At The Playboy Office". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved January 23, 2019.
  5. Fan, Jiayang (December 10, 2018). "Ling Ma's "Severance" Captures the Bleak, Fatalistic Mood of 2018". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 23, 2019.
  6. 1 2 Schaub, Michael (August 24, 2018). "'Office politics is, to some degree, horrifying' - Ling Ma on her horror-satire 'Severance'". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved July 15, 2019.
  7. Morgan, Adam (August 14, 2018). "In 'Severance,' Ling Ma Destroys New York City". Chicago Review of Books. Retrieved January 23, 2019.
  8. Borrelli, Christopher (January 15, 2019). "Chicago author Ling Ma never thought she'd write a zombie apocalypse novel. Here's what changed her mind". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved January 23, 2019.
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